


The Knight Slept (After)

by Nhitori



Series: The Knight Slept [2]
Category: Hatoful Kareshi | Hatoful Boyfriend
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-08
Updated: 2016-01-10
Packaged: 2018-04-25 09:16:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 57
Words: 65,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4954798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nhitori/pseuds/Nhitori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once there was a star,</p><p>And it was ruled by a pair of lying kings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Nageki stood at The King's Station. He'd been standing there for an hour already, but his feet didn't hurt. They never hurt in a place like this, after all. Holiday Star...

For nineteen years and counting now, Nageki had stood at this station for hours on end. The train followed no true schedule after all. Until it arrived, it was his sworn duty to stand and wait, and greet the dreamers who arrived to visit. And, to look for the dead who might be coming to stay. It was not, by any means, the afterlife. That was an entirely different matter; Holiday Star was only a vacation spot for most, but for those who Kazuaki had met or even just known of in life, it was an alternative to their other deathstyle options. Or for anybody who happened to notice that the train stopped here. Given that those options were, prior to the existence of Holiday Star, to go to the afterlife if good enough, or be stuck on the train forever if not, it was certainly a friendly option. Although, only certain people got the choice on their first time riding the train.

But of course, those who didn't have planispheres, those who had been rotten enough to be doomed to a travelling purgatory, a lot of them got off the train at this station, then got back on in the morning. Or stayed. Nageki couldn't begin to think how many terrible people had come to live here, but who was he to judge anyhow? A planisphere was required as proof to enter the employ of The King, and of course, he still reserved the power to tell anyone to leave at any time. That was Nageki's other job; not allowing those who have been commanded to leave, to get off of the platform until the train came and they got onto it.

Needless to say, he was... actually, he was entirely competent at this job, much to his own surprise. It wasn't as if he ever paid very much attention to what he was doing, nor did he ever think himself to be an intimidating person; However, he always happened to look up from his reading at the exact right moment, should he be keeping an eye on the evicted, and when he was 'greeting' all he really had to do was notice the train's arrival and say 'Welcome to Holiday Star'. It was a pretty simple job with lots of time off, those nights when the train came early and he didn't have any troublemakers to guard.

Tonight was not one of those nights. Though he had no troublemakers, it seemed the train wouldn't be coming for quite some time yet. It arrived as early as five, some nights, and as late as half-past midnight on others. That was the latest it ever arrived, and it always came back for the dreamers at sunrise, whenever sunrise happened to be. With a sigh, he returned his attention to the book he was reading. The King was very nice about letting him read on the job, and there was an entire library for him to pick from that only grew as time went on. At first it was only The Storybooks, which were... at least in Nageki's humble opinion, not very good.

However, they did give him a general idea of who to look out for when watching for new arrivals. Everyone that Kazuaki had known in life seemed to get a storybook. Even those he only knew peripherally. They were the people who would, upon death, be given the option to ask to come to this place in the form of somehow having the knowledge of its existence. Of course, they almost all seemed to visit occasionally while dreaming anyhow, so of course they'd know in that perspective, but The King seemed convinced that anybody with a story in the library would simply know to ask for Holiday Star. After all, Ryouta had never dreamed there before, and yet he knew to ask. Nageki certainly hoped it was the case, given that Hitori had never come here. He didn't dream, did he? But he had a storybook, unopened as that book was. Neither of them wanted to touch the book which had been dedicated to Hitori. Nageki didn't want to think too hard about it, and The King would pretend it didn't exist. Worrying about whether or not he'd ever come would only be made worse by reading about him.

As soon as Nageki arrived to stay, the library started filling up with better books, so he never needed to give the storybooks a second glance anyhow. He had books from all over now, because the price of admission to Holiday Star was one small memory, in contribution. They didn't take it, only a copy. Maybe it was a book the visitor had read, or a particularly lovely flower they had seen. More books, after Nageki was there to appreciate them, and he certainly did appreciate them very much.

He looked up from his book, however, as soon as he heard the train coming. He shut it, and held it at his side as he kept an eye on the cars, then noticed that one of them was lit rather peculiarly. The car of somebody who was newly dead, but for the train to even approach Holiday Star with one of those cars attached must have meant that whoever was in there had asked to come here. Nageki thought briefly, about who was even left. It seemed, rather unfortunately, that none of those people who had received a true invitation to come here had turned out to be particularly long-lived. Nineteen years, after all, was not a very long time when considering that they were all only teenagers before those nineteen years had passed. Nageki was... glad for their presence, but sad that it had to be this way.

The only ones who had yet to arrive, as far as he could consider, were Anghel and Yuuya. Of anybody to be a late arrival, it had to be the two who had disappeared so many years before. Nageki wondered if they might have been dead. With planispheres, after all, they could get to the true afterlife. And if their deaths had come before The King's, they never would have had the option. Nageki shuddered to think at the thought that he was almost in that same hypothetical position. After all, if he had happened to go to that usual afterlife, he doubted he would ever see Hitori again. But then, he was doubting it now too, so what was really any different?

Well, he supposed there was still the potential of Hitori arriving here eventually. If he'd gone on to... wherever, then there would certainly be no chance at all. After all-

In any case, the train had now stopped, and he needed to be prepared. As the dreamers all filed out, he gave his usual deadpan, "Welcome to Holiday Star, please enjoy your stay," before taking a deep breath and getting ready to deliver the other, lengthier explanation to whoever this was. He supposed that it would be proof that those who never visited before would know anyhow, given that he couldn't remember ever seeing any of the remaining candidates here in the past.

The lengthy speech he was prepared to give, however, was never going to be delivered. His words all fell flat as a certain friend of his stepped off of the train and just stood there for a moment before attempting to sound cool and failing miserably, "O-Oh. Nageki. I thought I might see you here." He had hoped. Hoped so much that he would see Nageki here, and this bettered the chances that Kazuaki might be too.

"I wasn't thinking I'd see you here anytime soon..." Nageki started, but then sighed and shook his head, "But I suppose that even if you didn't get an invitation, you'd end up here eventually. After all, I can't imagine you got a planisphere."

"That reward for being a good person thing? I can't say I was surprised not to have it either." He sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck, looking away. Of course Nageki would know, he always was a bright kid. But right now, he had more pressing questions on his mind, "If you're here, does that mean..."

"Yes, it does." Nageki nodded, "The King has been awaiting an audience with you for a very long time now, Hitori."


	2. Chapter 2

"Your highness?" Nageki asked at the doorway of the throne room. Every time he referred to The King with some sort of title, it was heavy with sarcasm, but at least he'd gotten so used to it after all this time that he didn't get upset by it anymore. That was just how Nageki was, it seemed, and nineteen years had to be enough time to get used to Nageki's slightly rude behavior.

"Hm?" Kazuaki looked up, then stood as well, adjusting his kingly robes. He'd only woken up about an hour ago, and hadn't exactly gotten himself sorted out for the day just yet. Having become, in his time as king, so incredibly forgetful and frankly somewhat childish, that this was a regular happenstance. It wasn't exactly that he'd started acting younger, but that in his forgetfulness, he was just missing a lot of the worldly information he'd picked up on throughout his life. Luckily, seeing as he'd shaped Holiday Star himself, he didn't need to be all that aware of himself to run it.

"There's somebody here to see you." Nageki said simply, but didn't get the chance to move aside and reveal who it was before The King started crying.

"A-Ah! Nageki, you should have given The King some warning!" He shook his head and covered his face, "Now his majesty will not be so majestic at all to this visitor!"

"Oh, I don't think this visitor is really going to care if you're majestic at all. And maybe it will make you stop talking like a tool, too. You did always say that you'd be Kazuaki again." And with that, he gestured for Hitori to step into the room ahead of him. Kazuaki froze where he stood, dropping his hands to his sides, and only staring for a good minute. Hitori did the same.

"H... Hitori...." Kazuaki's lip wobbled as he smiled, still crying as he stepping forward, but not out of sadness, and wrapped his arms around Hitori tightly, so tight that it seemed that he might never let go. Hitori did the same, this incredible feeling of relief within him that he could hardly begin to comprehend. Nageki was here. Kazuaki was here. And it looked as if the two of them had a much better past nineteen years than Hitori did, even just from looking around at the scenery. It was so pretty here, so bright, almost as if he shouldn't even be there.

But he'd known to ask for Holiday Star, and he'd felt, not an expectation, but a hope that perhaps that knowledge had meant something like this. Kazuaki had told him that they'd meet again someday, after all, and he'd only hoped on the train that his makeshift tickets could let him off at The King's Station. To see, so soon after getting off the train, Nageki... was like some sort of punch to the gut, but the most pleasant punch Hitori ever could have gotten. To ask if Kazuaki might be there and be answered with a yes was just the icing on the cake. So he buried his face in his shoulder, holding on as if his life depended on it even though they were both already dead, "Kazuaki, you're here..."

"I'm not just here, I'm The King of here!" Kazuaki enthused as he pulled away a bit, not enough to let go, but enough to look Hitori over, "You look just the same..."

"Well so do you, except for that outfit of yours." Hitori noted with a slight chuckle, trying to process this ridiculous euphoria he felt at being reunited with the both of them; Even knowing that they were happy, somewhere out there, would have been plenty enough to make him cheerful. This was more than he ever could have hoped for. As for looking the same, he supposed there must have been some algorithm for that, given that he clearly didn't look the same way he did at the time of his death.

"That reminds me..." Kazuaki clasped his hands together, then laughed a little bit, "Well actually, seeing you again reminds me of a lot of things. I knew this would happen." For somebody who just got a whole heap of memories back, he seemed very nonchalant, "But what I was particularly reminded of just now, is that you also get an outfit like this..." He took one hand away from Hitori's waist to press it against his own now-blushing cheek, looking away as he said the next bit, "Because you're going to be king with me."

"Me?" Hitori questioned, suddenly very perplexed, "Kazuaki, I don't think that I'd make a very good king..."

"Huh? Of course you will." Kazuaki shook his head, "That's how it's been since the beginning, because I always knew I'd see you again. Holiday Star would have two kings. Kazuaki the sun, and Hitori the moon. That's how it is."

"No, what I mean is..." Hitori started, then glanced over at Nageki, who sighed but stepped in to explain for him.

"He doesn't have a planisphere, Kazuaki." He said simply, and Kazuaki just dropped his hands to his sides again, taking a step back and looking almost afraid of Hitori, who just stared right back at him sadly.

"But... h-how?" Kazuaki shook his head, addressing Nageki rather than going right to Hitori with his questions, "I don't think it's possible. Hitori's always been the best person I ever knew, definitely better than you or me, how did he..."

"You two never really did anything wrong." Hitori answered for himself, "Of course you'd get them. Me, on the other hand, I went to prison. I think that's going to trip the system's filter, right?"

"What did you go to prison for, Hitori...?" Kazuaki questioned, wiping his eyes and seeming less afraid now. Just less.

"For killing you." He crossed his arms and stared at one of the glimmering walls, "That very same day I went and turned myself in."

"Hitori, that's silly." Kazuaki shook his head with a sigh and went to his side again, "Because you didn't actually kill me. I did. So you're not really bad, no. Just because you went to jail for no reason, the world thinks you are. That's okay. I don't mind."

"Well... thanks." He shrugged.

"So you will be king with me after all?" Kazuaki asked, and Hitori nodded, "Wonderful!" And just as soon as Kazuaki had said that, Hitori was dressed in kingly robes of his own. He supposed that since this was death, that wasn't a particularly weird occurrence. Kazuaki seemed confused though, "You are dressed in purple. Why is it purple?"

"I don't know," Hitori shrugged, looking at his own outfit then glancing at Kazuaki's, "I like the color red better anyhow."

"I think this is strange..." Kazuaki mumbled, "Nobody has ever been given a purple outfit before. All of my court is dressed in red."

"Well clearly that's because Hitori has his own court." Nageki rolled his eyes, "Or maybe it's because he doesn't have a planisphere. Maybe both. It's not THAT strange."

"Hm." Hitori nodded, "That seems plausible."

"I agree." Kazuaki then grabbed Hitori's hand and started pulling him towards a door, "And, we need to announce that Holiday Star has both of its kings now!" Hitori just smiled as he was pulled along, still far too happy. He was here, with Nageki and Kazuaki, in this place where (as far as he could tell) nothing bad ever seemed to happen. And Kazuaki was happy too, more optimistic in general than he'd been in life. So this was a good thing, wasn't it?

Yes, a very, very good thing indeed.


	3. Chapter 3

"U-Um..." Kazuaki stood on the balcony, looking out over the expanse of Holiday Star, "Attention, maybe, if you will, residents of Holiday Star? And uuh, the dreamers too, I guess?" His voice was shaky, hardly loud enough at all, and after that last word he started crying and hid his face, "I-I'm so bad at this whole public speaking thing... usually anyone who meets with The King does so in a singular conversation, where there is less volume and broadness needed..."

"Why don't I try?" Hitori offered, still externally much calmer than he expected. But then, he'd spent every day since then putting up an air of unfeeling, so it would take a while, wouldn't it, for him to really show his emotions again. As much as he was processing a great happiness over discovering that Nageki and Kazuaki were doing well here, he still had to cringe at the memory of what happened the last time he showed too much emotion, the last time he let himself act on his feelings. So he was able to be perfectly calm.

"Greetings, people of Holiday Star. This information concerns the residents far more than it does the dreamers, but I will address you all." His voice was very clear, honed of course from his time spent teaching. That was a long time ago, but not so long when his clock had been reversed to the last time Kazuaki had seen him. If he had tried to project this much after not speaking for 19 years, his throat couldn't have handled it, "My name is Hitori Uzune, and I am The Second King. This does not mean that your current king will cease to be king, but rather that Holiday Star will cease to be a monarchy and instead become an oligarchy." Everyone seemed to understand, so he nodded, turned around, and walked back inside with Kazuaki.

"Y-You did so well with that..." Kazuaki mumbled, "You are a much better king than me, I think."

"No, that can't be right," Hitori shook his head, then yawned, "I'm lucky I didn't fall asleep mid-speech, after all, and... you are a much better person than me. So that makes you a better king."

"Hitori, I don't think that's true at all. Who is the universe to say you're not good enough? Most of the residents here don't have planispheres anyway, and there's no fighting. If anyone fights they need to leave and a lot of people have lived here for a long time." He leaned against his hand, sighing, "So obviously it's not a sign of being terrible, to not have a planisphere... I was just confused at first because I thought for sure you would have gotten one."

"Whatever decides who gets planispheres must know everything about people." Hitori shrugged, "I wasn't the purest person around, you know? I hid bodies, and I..." He trailed off, frowning.

"Let's not think about that," Kazuaki whispered, stepping forward and putting his arms around Hitori from behind him, nuzzling his hair, "What's important is that you're here now, no matter what happened before. You're here now, and that's... truly wonderful..." He was tearing up again against the back of Hitori's head.

"Yeah..." He agreed, placing his hands over Kazuaki's. This was so nice, just standing here like this. To be able to touch him again, to be able to be with him like this even after the biggest mistake of his life, however many years later it was. Proper punishment, he supposed, may have been to keep him away forever; And to be capable of this, was more than he had ever possibly hoped for. It was so comforting, and there was a soft and warm feeling to the entire... well, it was night, wasn't it? The light of the other stars around, though, made it a bright and cheery place, and for both Nageki and Kazuaki to be there- It almost felt like he was dreaming, and soon this would all be gone, but he wasn't. He knew he wasn't. He had died, he was dead, and he'd been denied entry to heaven only to find something even better. And if it was a dream, would he feel so drowsy...?

When he woke up, he worried for half a second that he would wake up somewhere else, but he didn't. Rather, he found that Kazuaki had at least moved to a more comfortable position to have somebody asleep on top of him, cradling Hitori's head in his lap. However, he hadn't been woken gracefully. Rather, it was only ten minutes later, and he was woken up by somebody busting into the room and shouting, "Your Highness!!" The voice of everybody's favorite hunter-gatherer was what had jolted Hitori awake, "I'm really confused! Mr. Uzune, he's... He killed you! Why would you want to rule alongside him after something like that!? Is he lying to you!?"

"Hiyoko...?" Hitori said slowly, groggily, and incredibly confused. She was... here? She'd died? He always expected somebody like Hiyoko might live a little longer. And dressed in a lovely red outfit too, did that mean she was working for Kazuaki now? 

"Yeah Mr. Uzune, that's me! I knew you were sus when I saw you that night, smelling like bleach, and to see it on the news that you killed him... Why did you do it, Mr. Uzune???" She questioned harshly, but also clearly curious on some level.

"Hiyoko, that's awfully rude of you..." Kazuaki sighed, sniffed, then looked up at her with his eyes watering, "To come in here and accuse one of your kings of something like that? The Dark King is no liar. The Light King can tell you that much." He shook his head, "The only time he ever lied was when he told the police that he killed Kazuaki Nanaki. I've told you before, Hiyoko. Hitori did not kill me. I killed myself. You have no reason to worry, for he will be a better and more competent ruler than I am anyhow!"

"I can't say it's very reassuring when you refer to him as The Dark King..." She pouted, crossing her arms, "But I guess I can thank him for one thing. You seem much more like Mr. Nanaki now, Your Majesty."

"Hiyoko..." Hitori mumbled as he sat up, keeping one hand on Kazuaki's knee, not wanting to stop being so aware that he was still right there with him, "What happened to you...? How did you..."

"How did I die?" She finished for him, then tilted her head and smiled, "Oh, no, I don't think you want to hear about that. But, I have been here for three years, and until you arrived, I was the most recent addition to The King's employ. So it's been a while. You missed a lot while you were in prison, Mr. Uzune."

"I... guess that I did."


	4. Chapter 4

Nageki had left the room just as soon as the two kings decided to, well, introduce one of those two kings to the people. He sighed when he looked up to see Kazuaki stumbling over his words, but wasn't that just to be expected? He shook his head and kept walking, only to hear Hitori take over and... well, he certainly didn't do a great job either, but at least he could be heard throughout the kingdom, unlike Kazuaki. All anyone really needed to be heard here was the desire to be heard, something which The Light King really didn't seem to have at all. He couldn't help but be a bit proud of his 'big brother' though. He wondered if he might have surpassed him in maturity; After all, he'd spent nineteen years reading, while Hitori hardly seemed any different. More detached, perhaps.

But he couldn't really blame him, anyhow. He wondered sometimes if it might have been his own fault, but put the thought out of his mind. His mistake was never in anything he didn't do, but only that he told Kazuaki he wasn't feeling well. He had been fine, honestly. He didn't lie when he told Kazuaki that, and the night that he died he thought about telling him that he'd recovered.

No, it wasn't Nageki's fault at all. The reason he felt that way, of course, was a story for another time. After all, right now he had to deal with one particular comrade of his, who had run up to him in a state of mild panic. Before he could even get a word out, Nageki had responded, "Don't worry, Ryouta. There's no hostile takeover or forced truce or anything like that."

"But, Nageki..." Ryouta started to protest, and just got an open hand, palm-side-out, pushed two inches away from his face. That didn't exactly stop him though, as he just took a step back and continued, "The news way back then... Had a lot to say about it, but one thing was certain, and that was that Mr. Uzune killed-"

"That's what he told the police, yes, so of course it would go undisputed. He gets taken for a liar often, until he confesses a crime, at which point he would of course be immediately accepted as a criminal. He was always very kind, but never looked the trustworthy type. Maybe he was so nice to make up for that." Nageki postulated, holding one hand under his chin in a fist, "In any case, if somebody more innocent-looking had said that there might have been some question to it, but not with Hitori. Of course they'd all jump right onto the story."

"But you also said..." Another hand up, though Nageki kept it closer to himself, and Ryouta just sighed, "Nageki, you never said any of this when I told you about the news before. You even told me yourself that Hitori killed Kazuaki."

"I did, did I?" He asked, "Maybe my memory is going too. I can't say I remember saying that, though I've thought it quite often. In any case, it's more complicated than that. While I do think that his highness is putting too much faith in him... just because of what you heard, doesn't mean you need to worry about Hitori's being here. I spent almost my entire life around him, after all. I should know him better than anybody. So I suggest you shut up."

"Do I have to shut up about other topics?" Ryouta asked, somewhat earnestly.

"No... I suppose not." Nageki closed his eyes and crossed his arms.

"Well then, how's the book you're reading right now?" Ryouta asked, not even commenting on Nageki's attitude towards him. Back when he'd first arrived here, seventeen years ago, Nageki was still one of the only permanent residents, so he didn't have much choice of who to befriend. There was Nageki, and there was The King. While alive, Ryouta never really talked to his upperclassmen, but he'd discovered in death that at least this one particular upperclassman was a good friend, when looking past the generally dismissive attitude, "The title seems pretty interesting. Breaking Dawn?" 

"This?" He held the book up, then started glaring daggers at it, "Utter garbage. I expected something so thick, with such an ominous cover, would be more worth my time. It most certainly isn't. I think it's not the first book in its series, but I don't even want to touch any of the others if this is any indicator of their quality."

"If it's so bad, then why are you still reading it?" Ryouta asked, leaning around to try and catch the blurb on the back of the book.

"Because it's my prerogative to never give up on reading a book once I've begun it." He sighed, dropping his book-holding hand to his side again and thus jeopardizing Ryouta's chances of actually seeing what it was about, "So I'm stuck with this thick puff piece till I finish it. Every so often, this happens, that I'll end up reading a book so awful that I'll wish I never began it. But I never give up. Who knows, after all, maybe it will somehow redeem itself in a stunningly written first chapter," He had actually dropped the sarcasm only to deliver this line without any sort of expression whatsoever.

"That's never happened before, has it?" Ryouta asked with a slight chuckle, and Nageki shook his head, "Yeah, the way you were talking about it made it seem really clear that you were sort of dead inside when it came to that topic."

"I am dead inside." Nageki stared at him, "And outside. Ryouta, we are dead. Or did you somehow forget that little tidbit?"

"Sorry Nageki, but it just... doesn't exactly feel like we really are dead. I don't know, I guess we are, but we get to keep doing stuff as if we were alive so it's really not so different..." Ryouta shrugged, "Besides, things are better now, at least for me. Hiyoko and Sakuya are here, and we're all safe and happy."

"I suppose you're right about that. Spending death on Holiday Star, it might even be better than living. I can't imagine the real afterlife would be quite like that. I don't think they would take too well to rewarding the suicidal, after all. Lots of them end up here without planispheres, and of course The King lets them stay." He shrugged, "So maybe there's something better for you and I, but I would prefer to stay here. Especially now that Hitori's arrived without a planisphere."

"I'd rather stay, too." Ryouta agreed, "I really like it here. The only thing is, if I went on to the afterlife, maybe I could see my mother again..." He wondered aloud, but then shook his head, "But they would probably never let me back out once I went there. And if I wasn't here, then who would run Holiday Star's best restaurant anyway?" He had plenty more reasons to stay, but this one would certainly lighten the mood.

"Speaking of which, shouldn't you be at work right now?" Nageki asked, and Ryouta first looked startled, then nodded, running off back in the direction from whence he came, then Nageki turned around, "And you, Sakuya... let me guess. You're here to ask how a 'Homicidal Mongrel such as Mr. Uzune could possibly become nobility' right?"

"How did you know?" Sakuya stepped away from the wall he'd been leaning against and brushed himself off, "That is in fact what I was coming to ask, in close to those very same words. Are you a mind reader, Nageki?"

"Only with permission, which I don't have from you right now, so no. You're just incredibly predictable." He sighed, "Ryouta can tell you more, I explained it in more detail to him, but basically... Hitori holds no malice towards The King. He's not dangerous, he'll do well with this job, and the news is an unreliable source of information."

"I see..." Sakuya nodded, then actually processed what Nageki had said, "And I am not predictable, cur!"

"You're pretty predictable. And my brother's a king now so I think I'm higher status than you so calling me a cur doesn't quite work anymore," When Nageki said this, Sakuya just raised his hands in defeat and walked away, "Never change, Sakuya."

He figured that Hiyoko, being in the position of The King's guard, would have rushed straight to him with her questions about Hitori, so that was it for people who would be asking him how Kazuaki's supposed killer could now be on the throne beside him. Maybe one or two of the wandering souls who'd settled down here had also seen the news and cared, but chances were they wouldn't be asking Nageki about it. Hiyoko perhaps, she was the only member of the King's court who really seemed to the rest of the kingdom like she would have the inside scoop.

Nageki relaxed, sat down on a bench, and pulled out the terrible book.


	5. Chapter 5

Hiyoko sighed as she left the castle, rubbing her forehead with the back of her hand. How was she expected to guard The King well if he just ignored her when she went to warn him about something? He even got upset with her, for looking out for his well-being! But then again, what could she expect? The King had been Mr. Nanaki once upon a time, and he seemed to be a bit more like him again now; a confirmation, of course, that she couldn't expect too much out of him at all.

Still, she needed something to take her mind off of the fact that she had just been yelled at for trying to do the job she'd been assigned. There were a few options, of course, but she was certain that the best choice was to go where she knew she would ~just happen~ to run into one of her favorite people in the world. She had so much lost time to make up for with the both of them, given how she was the last of the three to die. Ryouta moreso, however. She hadn't even been without Sakuya for a whole year when she'd passed, but Ryouta...

Well, that was why she was going to his restaurant! Good food and seeing Ryouta in uniform was bound to cheer her up; He rarely ever wore his court dress when at home, so if she wanted to see him in it she had to track him down during the workday... er, worknight? She sometimes wondered if it was really such a good idea to have her work what was essentially a nine-to-five when she had such a crucial job of defending The King. Then again, she was less of a guard and more of a bailiff anyway, when she thought about it. She did a lot more throwing people out than preventing, because what was she supposed to do to check for malicious intent anyhow? It's not like dreamers has planispheres, nor most of the residents, so that was unreliable as hell.

Really, she kind of felt like she was only given a job to prove to her that she was an important asset to Holiday Star, but that wasn't exactly necessary. Strange as it was, it seemed that many things were just a bit too possible here, especially so for members of The King's court. In fact, it seemed these skills could be trained up, too! Nageki, for example, specialized in memory-viewing with a bit of generic mind-reading sprinkled in on the side as a supplementary ability, and a little bit of sensing.

Okay, everybody worked on their sensing a little bit; it became somewhat necessary to avoid being startled when Sakuya discovered that he could appear anywhere he wanted once or twice a day. Nageki was definitely best at it, though, able to tell when somebody in particular had arrived without even seeing them. Ryouta had picked up on an ability that only The King had previously had, the ability to have dreamers add to Holiday Star. It certainly helped him expand the menu at his restaurant, when everybody who dined there could introduce a new dish. Of course, limits were in place. Only The King could possibly gather small memories from everyone who visited. Sakuya couldn't do his strange teleportation thing more than twice a night, though with practice his accuracy had much improved. Nageki was getting very good at his whole deal, having had something like 18 years to practice, but still needed permission to do anything to anyone's mind.

And Hiyoko... well, she had never been very good at deciding in particular what she wanted to do, even in life, and she hadn't been here very long either, so she sort of didn't bother practicing any of the options. So she could perform a very weak form of any of the actions, once a night. She figured as long as she remembered to do it nightly, after twenty or so years here she might become sort of a jack of all trades, master of none. Maybe she could do /something/ with more accuracy, or more frequently, eventually. Perhaps.

In any case, she didn't care enough about it to really pay it much thought. But, she may as well practice a little bit, right? How about she tried teleporting to Ryouta's restaurant? No... that gave too much room for error. How about just to that general area? That would work out better. She concentrated on moving her mass to somewhere, anywhere in the general vicinity... and found herself right outside the door. Hey, maybe she was improving after all! But she was left dizzy, and knew this left her unable to attempt anything else later today. Training these skills was a slow and arduous process, but Sakuya had once been this bad at teleportation, and he'd only been here seven months longer than her... but again, he was focusing on one particular area, and was still only mildly good at it.

Then again, they did have all of eternity to practice, didn't they? That was probably why these things existed in the first place. A skill to learn that couldn't have been picked up back in the world of the living, and took a very long time to figure out. Just like these jobs The King had given to some of them, it was something for them to do with their endless time. These positions of employment were technically unpaid, aside from the status it gave them to be members of The King's court, but they were also technically unnecessary. Any of them could take a day off at any time, excluding the occasion when Nageki had a banned soul to keep an eye on till the train's next arrival; at which point Nageki would have to get one of the others to cover for him, in the case that he really wanted to take the day off.

But then, Hiyoko couldn't remember a single time that Nageki had asked for a vacation. She would know, after all, given the fact that she was the next best choice to keep an eye on the evicted criminals. Ryouta the restauranteer and Sakuya the opera-house-owner (was that what he'd be called? In any case, he had taken it upon himself to bring higher culture to Holiday Star) simply didn't have anything on Hiyoko, The King's Personal Security Guard! Though at the moment, she just wanted to get some lunch, so she went inside and sat down at a table. Ryouta's role here was marginal, which she thought was good for him. Keep him busy without stressing him out too much.

He'd worked plenty enough in nineteen and a half years of life to make up for if he'd worked an entire average lifetime, after all. He did deserve a break. The restaurant itself handled all the ordering, and the food just sort of appeared right after. Anything could happen on Holiday Star, she supposed. Ryouta's role was only to check up with finished customers and ask them to contribute a dish to the menu. Everybody had something, after all, even if everything they knew about was already there; Ryouta really couldn't distinguish between real meals and just, things that people had eaten when pulling the memories, so there were such things on the menu as a "Bologna and Oreo Sundae" which was exactly what it sounded like.

She had to admit, it was probably the most varied fare she'd ever seen at a restaurant. Of course, she would be ignoring all of the incredible variance to instead seek out an udon dish and order that. Yeah. That was a good plan.

Ryouta came to see her a bit later, while she had, of course, a mouthful, "Hey Hiyoko! It's your lunch break?"

She swallowed the noodles before responding, "Not exactly, I'm just getting lunch anyway," She sighed, stopping for a moment, "This recent development is... kind of stressful. But The King says it's okay, so I guess I can't do anything."

"Hm. Nageki said it was fine too, even though he used to say otherwise... He said it's more complicated than we thought." He sighed, sitting down across from her, "It's not busy right now, so do you mind if I sit with you for a little while?"

"Sure thing," She shovelled another mouthful into her face, then gave him a perplexed look, "Wait a second. If there's two kings now, we can't just refer to one as The King... But, Mr. Nanaki I guess, he mentioned something about The Light King and The Dark King, so..."

"That's kind of a mouthful. Can't we just use their names?" Ryouta asked, but then shook his head, "No, I know we can't. 'I'm The King now, not Kazuaki Nanaki' and all that."

"About that... when Mr. Uzune showed up, he started acting more like himself again. Less like The King, I mean. More like Mr. Nanaki." Hiyoko offered, "As much as I'm worried about the fact that Mr. Uzune killed him... maybe it's kind of good?"

"Maybe. Well, I hope so. And, don't you think it's weird to keep calling them that? They haven't been our teachers for a long time now."

"Eh. I don't know, it would be kind of weird not to, at least when not talking right to them."


	6. Chapter 6

It was nightfall. Another night to wake up, another night on the Holiday Star. Hitori found himself waking up alone, but that wasn't so odd. Kazuaki often woke up before he did. He always had and it seemed he always would, though Hitori had to wonder if it might not be the best plan, to let him sleep rather than wake him up. After all, didn't he have responsibilities? That was what he'd thought at first, but a few weeks had proven otherwise. Nobody really had responsibilities here, all work was only... some form of hobby, and by now, everybody seemed to have accepted his status as the other king of the realm.

He wasn't so sure he was okay with that, though. Hiyoko had been right to question his authority, and Nageki later informed him that he'd had to deal with both Ryouta and Sakuya as well. Anybody who'd seen the news reports about him, knew his name, recognized him, of course they would wonder if it was really okay, and the truth, that he was now one of their rulers. He didn't think that it was, honestly, but who was he to make that decision? Kazuaki was the one who created this place, and he wasn't about to ever let Kazuaki down again. He'd already done plenty of that, he'd already made the three biggest mistakes in life. He didn't need to make any more in death.

He sat up, looking around. The room was quite the interesting one, but all the rooms here were. All of the scenery was, frankly, gorgeous. This particular room was round, and windowless, with curtains over the doors. Of course it was, Holiday Star never got dark enough for Kazuaki to sleep comfortably. This was a fitting solution, given that Hitori could sleep just about anywhere. Including standing up. In front of a classroom. With his eyes open.

He really missed teaching. 

But, he couldn't dwell on that. He was dead now, after all, and while he could probably arrange to teach here... he wouldn't. The afterlife for him was never meant in any way to be a paradise. The fact that he even had this opportunity at all, this shot at happiness despite the fact that he most certainly didn't deserve it was more than enough.

He supposed that was the big difference now, between him and Kazuaki, what left them... like this, now. While Kazuaki had always been berating himself in life, he was overjoyed in this place. Like he'd gone through all that pain in life only to be rewarded with somewhere he could shape to his image of a perfect world. He knew that he deserved this, and he did. He most certainly did. Hitori had never said an ill word about himself before that day, at least, nothing too bad. Afterwards, though... he had a full and terrible knowledge that he was possibly the worst person to walk the earth. 

Maybe that was hyperbole; no, it most certainly was hyperbole, but it was hyperbole that he couldn't help but firmly believe. He has never known the personal details of anyone historically evil, after all, and even the people who he'd assisted Yuuya with... well, their individual deeds were certainly worse, he could admit that, but as far as he could tell they'd never so spectacularly hurt somebody that they CARED ABOUT. That they loved. So there was the distinction.

If any case, he couldn't keep thinking about this. It would only put him into a terrible mood, and he couldn't have that. It felt distasteful, to be in a bad mood in a place like this. No, in any place, so long as Nageki and Kazuaki were there. He regretted now, anytime he'd been upset while all the three of them were alive. He'd had all he ever could have wanted back then, and none of the guilt he had now.

This should have been a way for him to start over and forget the past, but he couldn't shake the feeling that he was lying to Kazuaki, somehow, and that was a horrible feeling to have. But he would put that feeling away for the time being, as he stood up and stepped out of the room, going to find Kazuaki.

He found him soon enough, playing chess with himself in the throne room, for some reason. Of course, he stood up suddenly and managed to knock all the pieces over just as soon as he noticed Hitori, "Good morning Hitori! Did you sleep well...?"

"Yeah. I always sleep well. But I guess I slept particularly well last night." He shrugged, stepping a bit closer and grabbing onto Kazuaki's hand, squeezing it just a bit too tightly, but then relaxing his grip. Always just a bit too tight.

"Well, you're certainly affectionate this morning, Hitori." Kazuaki chuckled, then kissed him quickly, "Not that I mind."

"It's just..." Hitori stared down at the ground, not letting go of Kazuaki's hand, "I was thinking, about just how amazing it is, to be here with you and Nageki. To even be able to say a single word to either of you again, to live around you is... it's too good to be true, honestly. So is it? I feel like this place... isn't real, almost."

"That's silly, Hitori. Of course it's real," Kazuaki was still smiling, how unlike him, "We had so many troubles when we were alive... but I always said I dreamed of somewhere I'd wait for you, somewhere we could have no more problems, and this is that place, Hitori, I'm sure of it."

"What if it isn't, though?" He questioned, trying to stand even closer to him, "Problems can't just stop existing, Kazuaki. For as long as we have individual thought... There are going to be problems. So I don't think it's possible, to be free of them. People cause problems, nothing else. Other factors just contribute. It's how you handle them that determines if it's a problem or not."

"Well..." Hitori could feel that Kazuaki was shaking now, but wouldn't meet his eyes to see if he was crying. Probably yes, "I... wish you wouldn't say that, though. I want to think that we'll be okay here. No more problems. Just you and me, and our friends, forever."

"I..."

"You once said you wanted me to be truly happy, right? Well, I couldn't do that when I was alive. Here I can. We can, Hitori."


	7. Chapter 7

"Give me the cheese." Somebody said in a deep voice, and Ryouta approached the table with a sigh. This was all too common.

"Excuse me, sir, but these menus are not audio activated. You just tap on the item. If you are in some way unable to do this, I'll be happy to help you out, though," Ryouta explained, and the person then shook his head and just tapped cheese on the menu. All right then. Later that night, he contributed "Very Tasty Cheese Soup" to the menu, which was apparently different from every other cheese soup already there.

And that was the last customer of the night. The sun started peeking over the horizon, and the train returned for its morning run to pick up anybody who might be leaving. It wasn't the same train that brought them here; it went on an entirely different track, existing only to return dreamers home. The dead people who wanted to leave would have to stay through the day and get on the next evening's train in order to get back on the right track. Though, eternally riding that train without a planisphere was hardly a good death-track to take, but to each their own.

As soon as the morning train had departed, Ryouta closed up the restaurant and went home. He had, since Sakuya's arrival and Hiyoko's soon after, been sharing a house with them, but he still owned the smaller one he'd lived in for all that time it was just him. Sometimes he thought about just going back there instead; it wasn't that he didn't want to be with Sakuya and Hiyoko, but rather that he wasn't sure they actually wanted to be with him. After all, they'd spent so much time together without him after he'd died, so they were much closer to each other than they were to him, at least now.

And it showed. It showed often, when they were all together and those two would make jokes and tell stories about the time after he'd died. It was his own stupidity that killed him though, wasn't it? Of course. So he couldn't blame them. He was at the door of his old house when he was approached by Sakuya, "Ryouta? What are you doing?"

"Hm?" He turned, then shrugged with a slight smile, "Oh, this is just where I was living before you got here is all. I thought I might sleep here today, just for old time's sake."

"For old time's sake? I'm going to take that as a lie," Sakuya crossed his arms, "Do you forget how well I know you? That hurts. In any case, you don't seem quite... carefree, enough, for that to be the reason."

"Hm." Ryouta nodded sideways, admitting to that bit, "I kind of did forget. I mean, I can't imagine you really did remember everything about me in the thirteen years you lived after me."

"Nonsense. It would be a travesty to forget something so crucial. And in any case, these past four years have been enough to renew any information that may have slipped." Sakuya assured him and put a hand on his shoulder, "You need not worry about that."

"I just... I don't know, Sakuya. I feel like you and Hiyoko went on and had a nice life without me, which is great! I wouldn't have wanted you to do any otherwise, really. But..." He hesitated, "You spent thirteen years together, without me, and when you got here I just sort of assumed things would go back to the way they were, but I never stopped to ask if you actually wanted them to."

"Ryouta..." Sakuya sighed sympathetically, shaking his head.

"Of course we did. Of course we do." Hiyoko added, having just walked up and heard the last bit Ryouta said, "We love you, Ryouta, and we're so glad that we can be here and be with you again!"

"You say that, but it's hard to believe. You two just spent so much more time together, so you're bound to be closer, know each other better. It's just... I don't want to be a third wheel if you'd rather just keep to yourselves."

"Well, that's just not true!" Hiyoko shook her head.

"Are you sure?" Ryouta asked, and despite the nods, he still seemed hesitant.

"Hey." There was a voice from above them, and the three were perplexed as they looked up only to see Nageki, for some reason, reading a book on Ryouta's roof. Something told them he'd been there the entire time, "You know, I could probably help you out on this front, if you want. I need some more memory viewing practice anyway, I've never tried sharing between four people."

"Well," Hiyoko was the only one who wasn't shocked into silence by Nageki's presence, "I can imagine that's a very nice roof to read on, but we would really appreciate it if you would help us, yeah. Can you do four people, though?"

"Hm. I'm not sure. As long as all three of you give me permission, it should be fine. I've certainly honed the skill enough to do this much. Probably. Sorry but, I will have to look in too, so..." He shrugged as he climbed down from the roof, "Pick something that isn't embarrassing, okay?"

"That was the plan." Hiyoko nodded, then turned to Sakuya, "I think you've got a good one, Sakuya. How about it? It's a pretty recent memory too, so it shouldn't be tough."

"I believe I do know what you're talking about..." Sakuya nodded slowly, "Very well, then. Do your worst, Nageki."


	8. Chapter 8

It was a bright, shining day, and Hiyoko was ready to take it on! Well, just as soon as she quit vomiting at ten AM on the dot, but she'd sort of gotten used to the nausea that was, at least for her, a clockwork schedule of three straight hours. But then, this wasn't Hiyoko's memory was it?

Prior to seven AM when her nausea always started, she'd helped Sakuya get ready for work, kissed him goodbye, and prepared for the daily nuisance. Once it was over with she'd probably go for a jog, but until then she could really do nothing but sit around.

Sakuya, meanwhile, was on his way to work when he got a phone call. He was driving, because his job took him just a bit too far out of town to keep up the usual habit of walking everywhere; and of course, the train didn't stop there either, making a car a necessary but extra expense. It was lucky, of course, that both he and Hiyoko were working, and that they were fairly well-paid. Yuuya's extraneous downpayments on the house had run out some time ago, so Sakuya really had learned the meaning of the term 'living expenses', though it wasn't like he and Hiyoko were struggling at all. Between his office job a few towns over and her position as a gym teacher at St. Pigeonation's, they were doing well enough.

And besides, driving was almost nice around here, seeing how few people were. There was much less to worry about when the few cars around had no real reason not to follow the laws of the road. So it was that Sakuya really had no qualms about pulling out his phone when he heard it ring. The number wasn't altogether unfamiliar, but he couldn't place whose it could possibly be either. Not Yuuya's, he never had Yuuya's number. There could be no harm in answering though, right?

"Hello, Sakuya," The voice on the other end spoke before Sakuya even got a chance to, and he almost dropped his cell right then and there. That voice, but there was no way, "It's been a long time," it had to be, though.

"...Monsieur Le Bel." He addressed him formally, wary, trying to keep his verbal and emotional distance.

"Oh, so you recognized my number after all. Or my voice, in any case, that's more than I expected. I should think you would have done your best to forget all about the Le Bel family." 

"Well, I did. Clearly my best wasn't good enough to clear away the impression you left on me. Is that really so shocking?"

"No, I suppose not. In any case, it's come to my attention that one of your romantic partners passed away."

"That was..." Sakuya had answered the phone with a sort of resolve against being bothered, but it now wavered, "Twelve years ago. Thirteen, next month. What makes you bring it up now, excluding perhaps some sudden desire to make me suffer more than you already have?"

"Au Contraire, Sakuya, I'm here to offer you something. Seeing as you are now in a typical relationship, with one singular girlfriend, it's clear that the mistakes of your youth were just that. Youthful mistakes. Now, you clearly can no longer be the Le Bel heir, but I'm willing to offer you an invitation back into the family."

"...What?" Sakuya was caught off guard, confused, and admittedly it did have a small effect on his driving; if he hadn't been the only person on the road, his baffled drifting into the wrong lane might have been a bigger issue. As it was, the big issue here was what his father had just said.

"You heard what I said. I've also been informed that your girlfriend, she's a month pregnant, isn't she?" 

"How did you..." He realized something, then raised his tone a bit, gripping the steering wheel tighter, "How do you know these things about me? How do you know that Ryouta died, how do you know Hiyoko's pregnant, how did you even get my number?"

"Very good questions. The answer is simple, however. Just because you've been excommunicated from the Le Bel family does not in any way mean that you weren't still under minor surveillance."

"I do not appreciate this fact and request you cease immediately."

"Without even considering my offer? Wouldn't you prefer to return to a life where you're beyond simply financially stable? You've obviously learned, seeing as you've spent the past twelve years in a monogamous relationship. I thought you'd be jumping at the opportunity."

"Jumping at an opportunity created by the death of somebody I loved? Pray tell, what gives you the impression I would ever do something like that?"

"The way you were brought up, perhaps? Pity. I really thought you'd realised your sin and moved on from such shameful ways."

"Well, you were mistaken. I'm not going to dishonor the memory of him in such a disgusting way. Maybe he is dead, but I did love him and I still do. So does Hiyoko. So I am refusing your offer firmly. I am no different now than I was when you kicked me out, only more composed, and missing somebody who was important to me. Goodbye. Don't call me again."

\----  
Nageki took a step backward, rubbing his forehead with a grimace, "Sorry. I can't keep it up any longer, so it's going to have to cut off there. It does seem, though, like that was enough to get the message across. So I'm gonna go. Bye."

Once Nageki had walked away, Hiyoko and Sakuya turned to look at Ryouta, Hiyoko speaking first, "So do you understand now, Ryouta? Just because we stayed together after you died doesn't mean we let anything change. You meant a lot to us. I don't think anybody but you could give Sakuya such strong convictions, after all."

"Any other time I might argue with that last statement, but unfortunately, Hiyoko is correct. Perhaps you weren't there anymore, but we certainly remembered you." Sakuya explained, sounding somewhat reluctant, but acknowledging the importance of making Ryouta understand that they really did care, "Why, Hiyoko and I never got married because marriage wouldn't have been an option when you were there. It would have been wrong."

"That was..." Ryouta finally spoke, having just stood there since watching the memory, "I guess I was just being paranoid, wasn't I? I was just scared. Because, I love you. Both of you, so much."


	9. Chapter 9

Hitori had never seen this door before.

That was saying something, given that he'd now been at Holiday Star for about seven months. The palace wasn't all that incredibly large or complicated. The rooms were big, but there weren't a lot of them, so it was generally very easy to navigate. It had to be, considering the fact that in Kazuaki's previous state of confusion, there was no way he'd remember something more complex. Of course he would now that he had more of his memory to help him, but for a while there, while he was only 'The King' any slight chance of getting lost would have definitely been seized.

So to happen upon something he hadn't seen before, while indoors, was certainly unexpected. There was no chance he'd simply ignored this door before. He could distinctly remember a painting of a rose hanging in the exact location where the door now stood before him. So there was no way he'd been oblivious to its presence all along, though if not for the painting, he wouldn't put it past himself. So he stood there, staring, and took a deep breath.

He could always... ask Kazuaki about it, but he got the feeling he would know even less about it than Hitori did, then get upset over being unhelpful. His best bet, then, seemed to be to see what was beyond the door for himself, in terms of figuring out the situation. However, he found himself wanting to instead leave it alone and ignore it. It felt almost like disregarding the door would be the best thing for his well-being; then again, he wasn't so sure he cared about his well-being, and besides. He was already dead, what was the door going to do, kill him again??

It wasn't even a gut feeling, anyhow. Not like when Nageki had died while he was out. Not like when he felt he ought to ask to go to Holiday Star, not like... well, he didn't want to think about that one. This was just an assumption made off of logic, that a mysterious door was probably dangerous, so he couldn't say he even got a particularly bad vibe from it. Even if he did, following his gut feelings had an eighty percent rate of leaving him worse off, so even that wasn't a good argument.

His curiosity got the best of him posthaste. Despite thinking that he probably shouldn't, he reached out and opened the door. Beyond it lay a set of stairs, but he couldn't see how high they went or where they ended, seeing as they took the form of a spiral. All he could really tell was that there was a light source somewhere at the top, because the stairs were still faintly visible when he stepped in and closed the door behind him, thus cutting off the light of the previous room.

The mystery was only made more compelling once he was past the door of unknown origin, a strange feeling that there was no way he could possibly turn back at this point, a need to know what was at the top of the staircase. So he started up the steps, keeping one hand against the wall and letting his robes trail behind him on the stairs he'd already used. It was long enough to go three stairs back, which was a fairly inconvenient clothing design, actually. But then, regality was never really based in functionality, was it? At least the stairs were clean. It was kind of a pain when the trailing garment picked up all sorts of debris.

When he reached the top of the stairs, he found himself in a fairly small room. There were actually no lights, but the floor seemed to be glowing softly, and there was one small window. Somehow there were flowers growing out of the floor, and there was a small pool of clear water in the center of the room. Kazuaki was sitting down, leaning against the wall just under the window; so he did know about the door after all. Hitori was still looking around when he was greeted, "Hi Hitori. So you can come up here too? I should have figured, the design in the pool is different now," When he said this, Hitori looked to see a mosaic at the bottom of the small pool, depicting in it a crescent moon layered on top of a sun design.

"Apparently so. Has this room... always been here?" He asked, moving to sit down next to him.

"Not exactly." Kazuaki shrugged, "It's here sometimes, and sometimes it isn't. Well, at least, the way to get here is. I really love it here, though. It's pretty, and quiet, and I feel really calm when I'm in this room. I've tried to recreate it as a more regular occurrence, but... I suppose there was only the one lantern."

"That's what this place is?" Hitori asked, leaning his head against Kazuaki's shoulder, who nodded.

"That's right, it's the lantern that was here in the beginning. It became this room, so I guess that's what makes it special. That's why it makes me feel so... okay." He smiled, turning to look at Hitori, "I don't feel quite so emotionally delicate in here. It's just so nice..."

"Yeah..." Hitori agreed, staring up at the ceiling, which seemed to have a design of constellations across it, "I guess, maybe, something about this room really makes it feel safe."

"That's the way it is, here. It's the heart of Holiday Star. I guess if it was here all the time, it might not be as wonderful to come here when it is..." He trailed off, then smiled again, blushed, and wrapped his arms around Hitori, "And I'm really glad you can come up here too. I know that you're afraid to be happy, or something like that, but I really want you to. No matter how you feel or what the universe says about you, I think you deserve all of this and more."

"You're too kind, Kazuaki..." He mumbled, but smiled as well, yawning softly before nuzzling his shoulder.

"You can take a nap up here, if you want to. I'll stay with you. It really is peaceful, isn't it?" He didn't even get a response, as Hitori had fallen asleep just the second he got permission. Kazuaki chuckled a bit, just quietly, and shifted to a more comfortable position, stroking Hitori's hair as he napped.

Kazuaki wondered if this moment wasn't one of the best he'd ever had. Everything was okay. Everything was calm. He was happy.


	10. Chapter 10

"Nice try, buddy, but no dice." Nageki blankly stated, crossing his arms as the wall closed across the doorway of the train, and he shook his head. He could control two different invisible walls while on the job; one across the train's doorway, and one across the exit of the station. Without that, there was no way he ever would have been able to keep people who shouldn't be here out. Of course, people were still getting kicked out, so clearly he wasn't making many efforts to block off the train's door, however... this time he recognized the blacklisted person, and saved himself the trouble of needing to keep him on the platform all night, "You're staying on the train."

As collected as he sounded, he mused while the train pulled away that it was actually the first time he'd had to prevent somebody from getting off the train a second time. Then again, this person was only a dreamer. They could easily dream on another train and end up here again, deciding for some unknown reason to get off of it rather than just stay aboard all along. After all, they must have remembered that they'd been banned before, for being mean to The King. That wasn't about to change, in fact, it held even truer now than it had in the past. Kazuaki only ever kicked out people who were intentionally mean to him, so his entire court tended to back him up on that matter. As would Hitori, now that he was here. The last person who'd been expelled from the star for that particular reason had been a bit of a hassle for Hiyoko to move, until seeing Hitori. Further proof to Nageki's conviction that his brother had the look about him of a pretty scary guy.

Well, he was about to add a 'despite being harmless' onto that thought just now, but Hitori certainly wasn't harmless. The lack of a planisphere proved that fact indisputably; and, knowing the reason, Nageki didn't want to argue with the universe's decision. However, Hitori was BASICALLY harmless, as far as Nageki was now concerned. As far as anyone was concerned, actually. It had been another eleven years since Hitori's arrival on Holiday Star, and that much time without disaster was enough to gain him at least a marginal amount of trust. It certainly didn't mean anybody but Kazuaki saw him as trustworthy, but at least the suspicion had died down as well to leave him as a neutral force.

As for anybody who had, since Hitori's arrival, been banned for harassing other visitors or residents, he'd dealt with them firsthand. He had a very particular way of making them understand that he would, under no circumstance, be having any of that. Nageki thought at first that Hitori wouldn't make a very good king, but had been proven wrong when he realized that on Holiday Star, what they needed wasn't exactly a government. Why would dead people seriously need a government? What Kazuaki was to them, was more of a friend who could provide for their needs, really. Sure he had the title of nobility, but it wasn't like his citizens ever wanted for anything, and he was generous enough to let his realm be a dream location without requesting much at all in exchange.

Hitori, on the other hand, was here to protect them. He'd been... well, overprotective, in life, but that served its purpose now that he was on Holiday Star. Whenever he was awake, nothing all too terrible could really happen to anybody. That wasn't saying a lot, given how Hitori had been known to occasionally sleep for stretches over 24 hours long since he'd been here, but at least nobody had to worry when he was awake. Unfortunately for Nageki, though, this meant that he still could not escape Hitori's wild eccentricities regarding his safety. Every night now, as soon as he was finished with work he was supposed to call and let him know that he survived his incredibly easy job for another night.

Of course, he wouldn't have to do that tonight. Not because Hitori had come to any sort of revelation regarding just how stunningly unnecessary it was, but because on this particular night, Hitori was there at the train station too. He did this at least once a week, taking the opportunity to talk to Nageki in a setting where he couldn't just... walk away, which he often did. Not to say he didn't enjoy talking to Hitori, but he would usually prefer reading over talking to anybody.

However, today was different, in that Hitori had hardly said a word the entire time he'd been there. Once the train had emptied, Nageki turned to him, book still tucked away, "So, is there any reason you shut up today, as opposed to any other day?"

"I didn't have anything to say." Hitori shrugged, standing up from where he'd been sitting on the ground.

"That's new."

"Isn't it? But really, I didn't have anything to say. It's always been tough to actually chat with you, I mean, you seem to know everything. I just wanted to spend some time with you. It's been a while now, but I still can't believe I got the chance to see you again after everything that happened."

"Hm. Neither can I." Nageki crossed his arms, "Given that I do know everything. Or at least, I know a whole lot about a lot of things. And I know quite a bit about you too, Hitori. I'd ask you to tell me about what happened the night I died, but I saw it. I'd ask about how you died, but you let me view the memory," He paused for a moment, looking pensive, "You know, Ryouta offered to let me view his too, but I couldn't. Isn't that odd? Maybe it's because you lied about your death to Kazuaki. Somebody has to know, I can't imagine anyone still living would know you as anything but a suicidal felon."

"I didn't lie, Nageki. I never lie," Hitori sighed.

"I know. You don't lie, but a lie by omission isn't quite a lie to you. He thinks it was some sort of accident, you know. When you told him you drowned, why would he think you did it to yourself? You lie like that all the time. For somebody who makes truth his prerogative, you really don't tell a lot of them. But I suppose I can't say you tell lies either." Nageki shrugged, then smiled just a bit, "In any case, I'm glad you were able to end up here despite everything you did wrong."

"Wow, was that sentiment? That's surprising, " Hitori smirked, leaning back against the wall, "Thanks Nageki. I knew raising you would pay off someday."

"Oh, shut up." He rolled his eyes, but was still smiling ever so slightly. Though, his smile faded momentarily when he heard a sound that was incredibly familiar, but completely unexpected, and he turned back around only to see something he never really thought that he would. There was a second train.

And in one car was the light of a new passenger; with the window as it was, he could see two sillhouettes, and it was clear that neither of them was the ticket-taker.


	11. Chapter 11

"So what do you think about that story, eh?" The waitress asked him as she refilled his coffee mug, pointing at the television up on the wall which was playing the news. Seeing as there wasn't anybody else present in the restaurant, she'd taken to chatting with the handsome fellow who'd come in just as she was turning the sign from closed to open. It was certainly earlier than they ever tended to get customers, at least on weekends. In response to her question he shrugged, pushing his sunglasses further up his nose and looking up at the small television in question, shades also pressing the glasses layered underneath closer to his eyes.

"You sure you wanna ask me about that? I've got a lot more to say than you might think. I follow news about criminal cases pretty closely." He smirked, and she only looked more interested. It was funny, just how easily he'd adapted into the persona of the mysterious stranger. Then again, of course he would, he could adapt to just about any persona as long as it still involved flirting on some level. He fidgeted with the elastic wristband with the name of some emo band written on it, he didn't pay much attention to what they actually were.

"Oh, I bet you do." The waitress chuckled, putting a hand on her hip, "So why don't you tell me what you think about that whole murder-kidnapping debacle? And maybe that other thing from a few days ago too? Crazy isn't it, too wild stories like that from the same town in the same week? You gotta have some sort of opinion."

"Oh trust me, I have an opinion. On the first matter, I have to tell you that the major media is reporting it all wrong. Small news sites are always the way to go for sensitive issues such as this one... the main outlets use too much supposition, just to get a good story out of it." He sighed, sounding almost annoyed, "What exactly is it that they're saying, again?"

"Well, what the news is saying, is that there was this prostitute girl, who had a boyfriend at St. Pigeonation's, who found out about it, killed her manager, and kidnapped her." She explained, "Now that you mention it, that does sound a little too much like a television drama... So what's the real story?"

"Well, don't take my word for it, but what I've heard from more reliable sources... first off, the person in question was neither a prostitute nor a girl, just a regular high school boy. The reason there are no pictures available of him is because his mother was asked for photographs of her daughter, and she does not have a daughter. They wouldn't use one of the pictures uncovered when investigating the deceased of course, seeing as that would be... disgusting." He paused to take a sip of his coffee, having put no cream or sugar into it, "Speaking of the deceased, he was not a manager of anything but the magazine company where he worked. When it came to his involvement in this case, he was only a sexual predator. So this high school boy, he was really only rescuing his boyfriend from that man, and wasn't kidnapping him at all."

"Well, the news sounds like a tv drama, but your version sounds like an action movie. Or maybe an episode of Criminal Minds." She looked perplexed and conflicted.

"Believe what you want to. In any case, I do think the latter story is more likely. The news just wants a dramatic story, wants to disrespect the victim of the deceased, and wants to make a demon out of the suspect. That's how the news works, you know? It always chooses a good guy and a bad guy. Any misdeeds of their chosen good guy are just as much of an afterthought as the good deeds of the bad guy." He shrugged, drinking some more coffee before offering her a strangely warm smile, "In a case like this, though, would anybody really be the good guy? So the news has to make up their own spin on what happened. Big networks care more about ratings than the facts. In any case, can I get two orders of pancakes? One of them to go."

"Certainly," The waitress nodded, giving the order to the kitchen before returning to his table, "So what's the truth behind that other story, then? The national news is saying that the guy killed his boyfriend in a fit of rage after finding his younger brother died in his sleep while they were both out of the house."

"That's... surprisingly accurate, for national news. As far as I can tell, that's exactly what happened," Though he didn't think it really was the case, nothing he found could tell him any differently. He couldn't honestly see Mr. Uzune doing something like that, or at least, not in the way everybody was saying. The physical evidence was confusing, too. True, there were bruises on the corpse's neck, and some issues with his ribs, but it also seemed kind of impossible to force feed someone bleach (a complicated activity) in a fit of rage, so there must have been more to it. But for now, that was really all he knew for sure anyhow.

"Really?" She asked, wide-eyed.

"Really. I'll let you in on a little secret, though," He smirked, leaning on his hand, "I met the guy, once. Hitori Uzune. Met his boyfriend too, and I can't say either way if I would expect something like this to happen. Being unable to say either way is usually a bad sign,y'know, but... I don't really think he would have done it, or that he wouldn't have. But I don't know what goes on in his mind, I hardly knew him, but I'm pretty sure that, since it seems he did do it, this fits in precisely with that impression. That I couldn't tell either way, he did it then regretted it and turned himself in..." He trailed off, staring into his half-finished coffee.

"Are you... okay?" She asked, seeming genuinely worried. He just scoffed, then smiled at her again.

"Of course I am. Why wouldn't I be? I was just thinking about how strange it must feel to have regrets." He shrugged, and despite his odd words, she seemed relieved. Of course she did, girls like her were always the same. Becoming as interested as possible in small talk, and as long as he stayed happy, his words would be forgotten in an hour. He figured it was probably dangerous, but he was still getting used to the fact that there was a warrant out for his arrest. It had only gone up a few days ago, after all.

"Oh, I see. In any case, I'll get your pancakes for you, they should be ready about now. It is an awfully fast dish." She offered.

"Oh, right. Could you bring the check, too? I'll pay and take the to-go box at the same time. It was lovely chatting with you, but I'm on a road trip and I'll have to hit the road pretty quickly once I eat if I want to beat the traffic near the city."

"Of course. No problem!" The waitress flounced away, brought him his food and the check. He ate, paid the bill with cash and as good a tip as he could afford (18%) then took the takeout pancakes and left, sparing one more glance at the television only to make eye contact with his own picture, taken from his instagram because apparently it was a bad idea to skip school picture day. And then to his reflection in the window.

Yuuya Sakazaki sure found it funny how much his appearance could be changed with just a pair of shades and a bottle of hair dye.


	12. Chapter 12

Yuuya slid into the driver's seat of the car, passing the styrofoam box along to Anghel, "Hey. You doing okay?"

Anghel just nodded as he opened up the box and unpackaged the plastic fork that came in it, along with a plastic knife and some napkins as takeout so often did. That was a good enough response for Yuuya; he was feeling okay, but not great. He'd taken to just saying nothing at all when he wasn't up for his 'Anghelisms', which made sense. Anghel being silent was much less concerning than Anghel speaking normally. Yuuya smiled at him as he turned the key in the ignition, but his smile didn't match his words so much, "Seems everyone's all over the news story about you and me, babe," He shook his head, chuckling, "Of course, they're reporting it all wrong. Pretty obnoxious of them to jump to all these conclusions about what must have happened. They're saying I kidnapped you."

"Nonsense and ill slander. The great council of information is not so great if they give rise to such stories," Anghel shook his head, taking a bite of his pancake, "But then, the council surely revels in the wide sheepishness of Earth's eternal crowd," And there it was. So he couldn't feel /that/ terribly today, which was a relief.

"This is true." Yuuya nodded as he pulled out of the parking lot, "It's for the better you never want to go inside the restaurants we stop at, you would be hurt to hear the other things they say," There was something different in his tone; after so many months around Anghel, he was starting to pick up on those same habits.

"No claims of sin could harm my steeled soul, clad in fabled green armor!" He insisted, only to go on, "But, though my soul is armored thus against the evils of this world, my crimson breast and that which lies within is not so resilient. Should you truly believe it to be a fault for me to hear such things, I will stand my ground to never enter those dreaded consumption palaces as it stands. However, should it be necessary you hide yourself further, Midnight Rose, I would in an instant overcome my hesitations and leap to thy aid."

"As much as I appreciate the offer, you're a little bit more conspicuous than I am," He chuckled.

"Conspicuous may the presence of a fallen servant of God be, yes," He shook his head, "But there is a fallacy in that assumption. Though I hath not viewed the news myself, I am presuming that, given the nature of the incident which led us down this fated trail," He paused, biting his lip before speaking again, "That they are not truly looking for me, but rather, one of such femininity as is present in those punished scraps of the true evil abyss, that which is far worse than Hell..."

"Anghel..." Yuuya sighed, frowning as he shook his head, "Let's try not to think about that, okay? You'll only upset yourself."

"Tis true," He nodded, leaning over to mess with the radio and play one of those obnoxiously depressing songs that Yuuya hated so much; but he never found a station playing his 'emo music' so he settled on a pop station instead, which was... better, "So I shall not speak any further words on the matter. Shall we speak instead of that which is no evil if the past, but of this day as the deep light of day surpasses the horizon thus?"

"You mean, today's problems?" Even now, he struggled to translate Anghel's statements occasionally. Of course, that wouldn't last for much longer at this rate.

"Undeniably so. It seems that we will soon need to pick up another task of miscellaneous nature, for that which this world exchanges for all material goods and ethereal services is that which we do not have extraneous amounts remaining."

"Anghel, we can't go around doing odd jobs anymore. It was sketchy enough asking random people if I could mow their lawn before, but now there's a warrant out for my arrest. Going to a restaurant is one thing, but people aren't so ready and willing to trust a total stranger with a lawnmower. They always asked for some sort of identification, which just isn't possible anymore."

"So... what can be done to remedy such matters?"

"We have to go even deeper into employment shit. There's a few options, none of them all too good. First off, we're going to have to take some pretty weird odd jobs, like working the rides section at carnivals, but that sort of thing isn't common enough to support us on its own. So we have a few options, none of them good. Drug trafficking or bank robbery, pick your poison."

"Is there no other way? Must we turn our heads so entirely to sin?" He questioned and, having finished his pancakes, closed the container and tossed it into the backseat, "I mean, I am certainly going to hell regardless of any actions I commit in this current string of life, but you..."

"Anghel, I killed two people. I'm pretty sure I'm already going to Hell too," He was still smiling, but his words were like bricks of iron, "So go on and choose, I don't give a damn which we do."

"It seems to be... less dangerous, to partake in this theft from institutions than to become involved with another group," He explained, "For the prior involves only the two of us, and that is a certainty of trust. There is no such oath or pact to be made with those strangers we would need to seek out to do otherwise, and one shadowy traitor could collapse all that we have worked for all this time, and in the sprawling future ahead of us as well."

"Bank robbery it is, mon amie," Yuuya once more sounded as carefree as ever, but he was anything but carefree as he wondered just how far this was going to go; But it was for Anghel. All of this was for Anghel, right? Not quite, he could turn himself in and Anghel would probably manage just fine. So it was for himself, really. He didn't want to leave his side, ever.

So it seemed that a life of crime was the one for him, after having spent a good chunk of it fighting crime. The things he did for love.


	13. Chapter 13

"Midnight Rose... why do you not repair your accessories of vision?" Anghel asked after a long period of silence in which they'd only listened to the music playing. It had been six years since they had become officially on the run from the law, but aside from the robbing and secrecy, it was hardly any different from the first few months they'd simply run away together. There was still the stretches of comfortable quiet, and other stretches with pleasant conversation. To spend so much time on the road with somebody, there had to be this matter of balance, otherwise they would definitely get sick of each other before long. It was lucky for the both of them that they settled into a travelling happy medium.

"We don't have the money for it." Yuuya shrugged, adjusting his cracked glasses underneath the cheap but opaque sunglasse which were not similarly marred, "For one thing. Plus, that would require seeing an eye doctor. Between needing documentation and letting somebody that close to my face, it's a risk we can't take. Trust me though, I can see just fine even with a cracked lens. I am a model driver, conquering all physical limitations to follow the law of the road."

"So now you give care to earthly laws?"

"Well, if I didn't, we'd get in an accident. We can't have that, can we? So yes, I do break heavenly laws to follow at least these earthly laws. Even half-blind and drunk, I will never get so much as a ticket for running a stop sign," This wasn't hyperbole. Yuuya probably wasn't actually drunk at the moment, but a quick glance in the backseat would prove that it was more likely to see him drunk than not. Actually, Anghel wasn't even sure at the moment if he was or not. If he wasn't yet he certainly would be soon enough, given the bottle in the cupholder between them. One more reason it was important they never got pulled over.

"Does the potion of confusion currently run through your veins?" Anghel questioned, more curious than anything.

"Do not think, gentleman, I am drunk: This is my ancient: this is my right hand, and this is my left. I am not drunk now; I can drive well enough, and speak well enough."

"...So the answer is yes." Anghel deadpanned, and Yuuya sighed, but smirked. Of course he knew that loose quotation was written as a drunk person denying his drunkness, so he wasn't exactly denying anything with it.

"Right." Yuuya nodded, "That's not a problem, is it? We're stopping soon anyhow."

"It has never been a problem before. The potion of confusion makes incompetent the most capable, and yet you so soar above its effects. So I do not worry." 

"Thanks," Yuuya chuckled a bit, noticing a sign and pulling into the parking lot of a motel, "This isn't the same chain we usually stop at, but it looks seedy enough to just take cash."

Anghel nodded as he opened the door on his side and stepped out, immediately going to stand next to Yuuya as they walked in. His assumption had been correct; a room for the both of them, just for tonight. Twenty dollars, paid in cash, no questions asked. Upon getting to the room, Anghel stood by the door while Yuuya checked for bedbugs. Even before they'd gotten used to being on the run, he'd been good at this sort of thing. He'd shared that before this happened, his job had been as a secret agent, but... well, of course he wasn't any more. He'd been under orders not to kill unless necessary, and while Shuu would have likely killed him if he hadn't acted so quickly, Tohri was unarmed. He could have easily been arrested instead of killed.

Yuuya had wanted him dead, though, and Anghel certainly wasn't complaining either. Besides, all that training paid off when it came time to run from the law. He knew all of the tricks, and that helped put Anghel at ease, in a way. After determining that there were no bedbugs, they both sat down on the bed, and Anghel sighed, leaning against Yuuya's shoulder. Yuuya just smiled softly and put an arm around him, "So, how are you holding up, mon amie?"

"My crimson breast feels no ill aura." He answered, turning to look up at Yuuya, "But for one small matter, Midnight Rose. I find that my fear of closeness has waned just enough that I now pine for that which signifies romantic connection so clearly."

Was Anghel saying that he wanted to kiss Yuuya again? Six, almost seven years was certainly a long time, but that was only to be expected. Anghel had never handled physical contact too splendidly before Tohri got to him, and four meetings with that man was enough to turn him off of it for a very long time. In exclusion of the tearful embrace they'd shared the day Yuuya killed, Anghel had very slowly gotten used to being touched again, even just his hand, and even know hadn't managed a kiss again. Well, until this moment. At least, Yuuya thought; he wouldn't kiss him without clarifying, "Crimson Angel, do you want me to kiss you?"

And he used, too, the least painful name Anghel had, though all seemed to sting. After all, his first meeting with Tohri had him called Anghel Higure; the following, Yoshiko Agaki. Not Yoshio, but Yoshiko, which only served to hurt him further. So he still preferred Anghel as his name, but Crimson Angel was an even nicer title. Nobody had ever hurt him with that name, after all, so Yuuya used it whenever he could remember to. In response, Anghel just nodded, and Yuuya gave him a short peck on the lips. He smiled, then leaned over onto his back before turning sideways, already half-asleep on top of the comforter. Today was a long day, so it made sense he'd be exhausted.

Yuuya sighed and watched Anghel, a genuine smile on his face. His smiles were never genuine before, he could say that with certainty. Before meeting Anghel, they'd always been fake, but something about him made Yuuya happy, so very happy. He was in love, and he knew it, and even now he would do whatever he had to do to keep that love dear to him.


	14. Chapter 14

Years passed.

Time went on, and very little changed in the life of Yuuya Sakazaki and Anghel Higure. They continued hiding from the law in just the same way, robbing banks only occasionally; just when they needed more money, which they made sure to stretch for just as long as they could. They never stole very much, either. The plan was never to jeopardize anybody's expenses, and taking too much money from a bank did have the potential of affecting the personal finances of others. In complete ignorance of inflation and changes in their personal expenses, they set a flat limit to never surpass.

To keep that flat limit just the same, and to keep their crimes at the same frequency... When considering inflation, Yuuya's drinking, and aspirin for Anghel's far-too-common migraines, they had to resort to other means. Rather, Yuuya had to resort to other means. Anghel had said that he didn't have to, that they'd figure something out, or that he could help too, but he'd been shut down right off the bat. Of course he couldn't help with this, he was hardly recovering at all and something like this could only hurt him more. And Yuuya had smiled as he told him that he had it under control, but that didn't seem to be the truth.

So Anghel was sitting alone in their motel room, sat on the edge of the bed, alternating between kicking his feet and reading the bible from the drawer, seeing as he didn't have any other books with him. Yuuya had taken the car with him to go to 'work' as it was, so Anghel was both without his boyfriend and without any other way of relieving his great boredom. Though he supposed he should be glad a shady motel even had drawer-bibles at all, they were definitely donated by some outside religious group. He sighed, closing it and pushing it back into the drawer again anyway, and just leaned over the other side of the bed, looking through the bags he'd been left with.

In the bag from the drugstore, he found a bag of chips (they'd been on a great sale, super cheap) the aspirin, and a pen and paper. He hadn't even noticed that last bit earlier, but he also hadn't looked inside the bag too much when Yuuya brought it out. He never really did, floating rather simply through this odd lifestyle they'd taken up all that time ago. Yuuya dealt with all the tough stuff, and Anghel was just there. He tried his best to help where he could, but Yuuya always insisted that he could do it on his own. Then again, there really wasn't much Anghel could help with in the first place anyhow.

He sighed, and pulled out the aspirin, leaving the pen and paper there. He could draw, of course, but he didn't quite feel up to it. No, at the moment, he didn't feel up to much of anything at all, head filled up instead with thoughts about the current situation. He and Yuuya had, for the most part, been okay. There was a bitterness that passed, not between them, but over them. There was a period of time where they'd been happy, when Anghel had been recovering from his ordeal and Yuuya had an optimistic outlook. That was gone now, though. Anghel turned and curled up on the bed, awake, staying awake until Yuuya walked in an hour later, looking disheveled.

"Hey, I return," He announced his presence as he closed the door behind himself, "You still awake? Sorry I took so long. I tried to go shopping on my way back, but I stopped at three different places and they all tried to card me," He grumbled in vague annoyance as he sat down next to Anghel, opening up one of his few remaining bottles from another bag at the foot of the bed, "I'm thirty one years old, you'd think that's old enough for them to stop with this. I must just have superhuman good looks after all. Still so youthful, even at this age." There was no response, but he could see now that Anghel was definitely not asleep, "Is something the matter, mon amie?"

"Yuuya..." And there were the red flags. Prior to the incident, Anghel did use his name, but not once since then had he been referred to with any title that didn't include the word "rose" in some way. It was like before, when Anghel had referred to Hiyoko by her name rather than as Edel Blau; And Yuuya knew all too horribly how that had turned out, despite only hearing of the happenstance from Anghel later on. What he said next was only more concerning, "Is it my fault that you're... like this?"

"What are you saying...?" He understood Anghel more when he was speaking in practical tongues than he did right now.

"It is. It's my fault. The reason you killed him, it was for me. And now there's nothing I can do to help you. Just watch you become miserable. Don't think I haven't noticed."

"I..." He hesitated, crossing his arms first, then putting a hand on Anghel's shoulder, "No, it's not your fault at all. You didn't tell me to kill him. I did it all on my own. I hated him and I hated what he did. So I killed him," He said it so simply, "Living like this isn't so great. Drinking isn't great, nothing about this is good at all, except that I'm doing it with you, dear. Running from the law is no fun at all, but at least with you it sometimes feels as if there's nothing at stake at all. As if we're only doing this because we feel like it and not because we need to. No, mon amie, you've done nothing wrong at all."

"And don't you think," Anghel continued on the same, as if Yuuya hadn't even said a thing, "It's messed up. A little bit messed up. If you got tired of me, could you even leave? You would be leaving me all alone. You're throwing everything away, and for what? What if you stop loving me, what happens then?"

"Then I stay with you anyway. Unless you don't want me to," Yuuya answered, dropping the half-finished bottle on the ground with an unsatisfying thud before leaning over to wrap his arms around Anghel, "I wonder the same thing. If you stopped loving me, what could I do? You're what keeps me going, now. My mistakes are my own, but having you here lends them purpose. I got myself into a whole mess of trouble, but at least you're here. At least you're alive and sometimes even happy. Without you here, I'd just go let myself rot in jail at this point."

He still didn't regret anything he'd ever done. He justified them, in his mind. For Sakuya. For Anghel. For Anghel. With a track record like that, though, it all had to boil down to one thing. For himself. Anybody he helped by doing those things was some sort of side effect; but even with that knowledge, he didn't regret anything. He felt guilt over certain things, but not regret. There was a difference. Regret would mean he wished he never did it at all. That wasn't true. It simply wasn't true. However, he wouldn't resist getting caught so much if not for the people he pretended he'd done it for.

"And it probably isn't quite healthy," Yuuya continued, "To be this way, you and me," He held Anghel's hands, then kissed them, "But even if it's not, I love you. And I know that our circumstances may not be the best for our relationship, but that I only want what's best for you, no matter what happens. I want you to be happy. I'd just enjoy it, if I could be a part of that. I need you. But if you ever need to go, I'll manage."

"The feeling is..." Anghel leaned into Yuuya's chest, "Mutual, Midnight Rose. Your joy is my biggest concern, but joy is a scarce resource at this crossroads. I aim only to see you smiling as often as I may."

Maybe it wasn't the best relationship around, and maybe it relied too much on a need for each other; but it hadn't always been that way, not at first, not before. Need rose from a problem that began after they'd already been together for a time. So it was that they both knew, despite what they'd just said, that they had something between them that no other could match.

A love that was not "true love" or "passionate love", but pure love.

Purity was an odd thing to consider, but it was what they shared. A love that would not be corrupted through hell and back, no matter how far they fell or how bitter they became.

They would always have that.


	15. The Codependent Storybook

There was once a world made up entirely of puzzles.

Every person was a puzzle piece, and every puzzle piece was flexible. So flexible.

Sometimes people made very big puzzles with very pretty pictures,

And everyone in that big puzzle was happy.

Because, a person was happy when in a puzzle, because all the puzzle pieces helped all the others.

But there were two lonely puzzle pieces who were not quite sure what they could do.

They were incomplete, every puzzle piece without a puzzle was incomplete.

Each of them could fit into another puzzle, but only fit. The pictures never matched up. The other puzzle pieces did what they could to help, but it was pointless. The lonely puzzle pieces would just stay sad forever.

That was what they thought, anyway.

So one puzzle piece decided to act like it didn't care about anything at all. It was the happiest puzzle piece in the world! 

That was what it told people, anyway.

The other puzzle piece decided that because it didn't match any of the pictures, it had to be from hell.

That's right, it was a fallen angel with a long-sealed demon within itself, and that was why nobody could get close to him.

That was it told itself, anyway.

Poor puzzle pieces,  
Poor puzzle pieces.

But one day, these puzzle pieces met. 

A happenstance of fate, an occurrence so odd that it could only be that.

The first puzzle piece was confused by the second, but had to pretend it knew what it was talking about in order to help the second puzzle piece.

The second puzzle piece couldn't believe that the first was so willing to go along with it, only to help with some schoolwork.

And so it began.

Bad things sometimes happened to the puzzle pieces, but now they helped each other every time and it was okay.

Both the puzzle pieces were okay.

And one day, they realized something.

They were a puzzle. A completed puzzle, just the two of them, with a lovely picture on it. Together, they were completed.

It was only them, though. Only the two of them, nobody else, which put them at a disadvantage.

They were the only puzzle in the world with only two pieces.

But they needed each other.

So it was okay.


	16. Chapter 16

Nageki stood unfazed as the train pulled into the station, though he was internally confused as all get out. Hitori’s questions about the train coming twice didn’t help to clear his head either, so he just ignored it instead and stared down the train as a third shadow joined the other two, then walked with them to the door of the train. The first person that Nageki saw was only the shadowy conductor, and neither of the people behind him.

“Many apologies, Your Highness, and Nageki,” He bowed slightly, shaking his head, “Normally this train does not stop here, so it seems you may be confused by my presence. These two young scoundrels insisted on coming here, however, and I cannot deny such requests.”

“Two young scoundrels? That is a most false statement, conductor of doom. We may have reverted to a youthful appearance in death, but the last time I looked in a mirror I was forty-six years old. So we are no youths, but rather worldly scoundrels, flattering as it may be to be called such…” The words were a strange blend of flirtatious and confusing, which left both Hitori and Nageki wondering who it could be. It sounded almost like Yuuya, but…

Well, in any case, it was Yuuya, seeing as he stepped off the train when the conductor moved aside. As soon as he set foot on the platform, his rather odd ‘emo’ attire changed to something much more fitting of him, a tattered black longcoat layered over simple dark trousers and a purple shirt. He grabbed the end of the coat, perplexed, “Why, is this some sort of dress code?”

“Tis a ring of Hell, Midnight Rose! Of course we are to be attired in dark garments!” Another voice called out, then Anghel stepped off of the train to be clothed in a similarly interesting outfit, a black vest and what looked like opera gloves alongside the same sort of pants that Yuuya’s clothing included, with an undershirt in the same shade of purple.

Hitori was standing there in shock for a few moments, but soon stepped forward and examined Yuuya, then gave him a smirk and crossed his arms, “So you didn’t get a planisphere, can’t say that I’m surprised.”

“Well,” Yuuya shrugged, chuckling nervously, “That’s the thing for getting into heaven or whatever, right? Of course I wouldn’t get one. I carry now far too much sin within my heart. Is it my fault you’re without one, though?”

“Oh no, not at all,” Hitori shook his head, “I did worse things than help you, Yuuya. In any case, it seems that you’re going to be a member of my court, hence the outfit. Note that it’s purple, whereas Nageki’s is red? Welcome to my non-planisphere club. And… Anghel too? What did he ever do anyway?”

“Three decades have gone past since you last knew of me, Black Light of Tranquility,” He responded darkly, “I did have one of these which you speak of, it is true; a compass to show the way through the unending inky blackness of the void. Within moments of my noticing, however, it had faded away. I can only assume that, should the possession of this be a judge of character, it realized the weight of my sins and took upon itself to disappear and prove that I am indeed, unworthy. Tis only to be expected of a fallen angel, to be looked upon by Heaven only to be forsake to Hell. However, this seems not to be so… Textoris Melodia Funus is here, and by his garments you say he has one of these holy artifacts.”

“This isn’t Hell. It’s a place called Holiday Star,” Nageki explained, “It was created by Kazuaki Nanaki, who is The Light King. Hitori here is The Dark King. I am a member of The Light Court, and now it seems the two of you are going to be The Dark Court. Anyway, I’m leaving. Have fun. Oh, before I go, Yuuya? Why are you talking like that?”

“I spent thirty years with this.” He deadpanned, pointing at Anghel. He’d picked up on many of his strange mannerisms after all of that time.

“Good point.” And with that, Nageki was gone, leaving Hitori with the other two. He had left because he figured they would be more open only with Hitori; he seemed to know something about them that Nageki didn’t, after all. Maybe the reason they’d disappeared a few months before his death was something that Hitori was involved in. He wouldn’t be surprised by it.

Hitori sighed as he watched Nageki go, but then turned back to the newcomers, “What he said is the truth, and I’m only assuming the reason for your outfits is that you’re my court. So basically, you’re royalty here. A sort of aristocracy under my employ, though you’re under no obligation to take up any sort of responsibilities. The Light Court all has, but it’s in no way necessary.”

“What sort of jobs are they employed to?” Yuuya asked, curious.

“Nageki works here at the train station, as you saw. He watches for the train, and also prevents felons who have been banned from leaving the platform or the train. Ryouta owns a restaurant where every dish is contributed by a visitor’s memories… Hiyoko is the royal guard, I’m not sure what that even entails besides aprehending those felons I mentioned earlier. And Sakuya owns an opera house.”

“Sakuya…?” Yuuya asked, taking a step backwards.

“Yes, Sakuya,” Hitori answered, shaking his head, “Unfortunate as you may deem it, you seem to have outlived all of your friends from school.”

“I…” He seemed speechless, just standing there and trying to come up with something, anything to say. Nothing came.

“It’s sort of a tragic irony, I think…” Hitori continued, seeming to ignore Yuuya’s discomfort. Normally he wouldn’t be this nasty to anybody, but somehow it felt necessary, “The two people on the run from the law, outlived everybody else. Everybody who lived a fairly domestic life, more or less,” He paused again, “If it’s any consolation, Sakuya lived a good life. I know not how he died, but I can’t imagine it was anything but an unfortunate accident…”

Yuuya just nodded, seeming to compose himself again, so something about Hitori’s rudely aloof words must have helped somehow. Anghel was being quieter than usual, but what did Hitori know about usual anyhow? It had been a long time since he’d last known anything at all about Anghel Higure. It was thirty years ago. Thirty years, and he hadn’t heard a word from either of them in the nineteen of those years he’d continued living.

“I need to go.” Yuuya stated before running off, and it seemed like he was going slightly, just ever so slightly faster than he should have been. He was gone in seconds, and Hitori just shrugged and turned to Anghel.

“So, how was running from the law for thirty years?”

“An adventure of great size and danger, wrought with both suffering and happiness throughout the years. I am… ready for a break from such trials and tribulations. That is what I shall find here, is it not?”

“If Kazuaki is correct, then yes. That’s exactly what you’ll find here.”


	17. Chapter 17

Sakuya was out walking with Ryouta and Hiyoko when he heard somebody calling his name. It was something very unexpected; the only people who would usually call his name were both right there next to him. Nageki and him never really talked, and if either of The Kings wanted an audience with him he doubted they would be yelling from a distance, even if he was better at teleporting than either of them. The distance between him and the shouting was quickly closed, however, by an unrecognizable shape running right up to him. Then it stopped, and Sakuya would have preferred it remain unrecognizable.

“What do you want, Mongrel?” His tone was harsh and unsurprised, though he certainly was shocked to see Yuuya here. A quick glance showed his clothing was purple; just like Hitori’s, so he figured it must be some affectation of his behavior in life. It wasn’t surprising that Yuuya wouldn’t get a planisphere, though. That’s what he got for ducking out like that. Was that really bad enough? Maybe not, but Sakuya would prefer it to be the case. He'd rather not get angry over anything else his mongrel of a half-brother could have gotten up to.

Sakuya, Hiyoko, and Ryouta had never known about the warrant out for Yuuya. After hearing about Hitori killing Kazuaki, they’d all decided to stop keeping up on the news. It was only depressing. All they ever heard about Yuuya’s case was that it turned out upon investigation that Tohri Nishikikouji had been murdered after all. Nothing about who it was, nothing about any kidnapping.

“I heard you were here, so I came to see you immediately. What happened? How exactly did you die? Are you okay?” He questioned, grabbing Sakuya’s shoulders only to have them pushed off.

“I am quite fine now. I died in an accident, that is all. A foolish mistake which unfortunately led to my death. Otherwise, everything was quite all right. No thanks to you.” He crossed his arms, glaring at Yuuya who stepped off upon realizing Sakuya’s unhappiness, “Taking off like that, only to come back now and act as if it hasn’t been thirty years since I last heard a peep from you? I was only just starting to appreciate your presence, and you left. Why, I’ll bet you didn’t even know that I had died!”

“I didn’t,” Yuuya answered, shoulders slumping. He didn’t quite frown, but his smile certainly wavered. Of course Sakuya would be annoyed with him, what was he thinking?

“You…” Sakuya faltered, but then regained his composure, “Well, that’s your own fault for leaving like that. I’m not surprised that you’re a member of the dark court, having left me all alone like that. You begged for my acceptance most of your miserable life, then when I finally warm up to you, you just take off? That’s hardly dignified behavior and I should think better of you, Yuuya.”

“You are… correct,” Yuuya sighed, turning around, “Sorry. I’ll go,” And with that he left, just as confusingly quickly as he had arrived. Sakuya sighed, turning back to the others.

“Sorry you had to see that.” He apologized, rolling his eyes.

"That was a little harsh, Sakuya..." Hiyoko started, sounding somewhat disapproving.

"And his leaving like that wasn't?" Sakuya grumbled, though his tone was softer when addressing Ryouta and Hiyoko than it had been when talking to Yuuya.

"At least he did say goodbye?" Ryouta offered, shrugging slightly, not exactly trying to defend Yuuya (He wasn't one to jump at defending those without planispheres, especially shrouded in such mystery) but rather only to calm Sakuya down.

"Hardly. He didn't say farewell. He only said that he wouldn't be returning, that's not worth anything," Sakuya was strong in his resolve, but his emotions weren't so monochrome as his opinion. It was clear in his tone that he wasn't only angry. He was confused, and upset, and he didn't want to see Yuuya again now. Not after all this time. Not after missing him for so long, wondering where he'd gotten to, and being... left alone.

He wasn't alone. He had Ryouta, and Hiyoko, but he'd certainly felt alone often enough after Yuuya had left. So what if he had a good reason? No reason Sakuya could think of would possibly be good enough for that splendidly awful timing of his. Oh yes, good plan, abandon your half brother so soon after he's been disowned. Isolate him from family completely. Great idea.

He couldn't have known, though, and maybe if he was aware of the weight of the situation he might have a different opinion. Unfortunately for Yuuya, Sakuya was too sheltered for the idea to even cross his mind that he'd been a wanted criminal for the majority of the time he'd been gone. In his life, he only knew of the terrors he himself had dealt with. Ryouta's legal guardian, and the addiction that sprung from his actions. His own death.

Hiyoko's death was the only conclusion he'd ever been able to jump to correctly, and even then he wished he hadn't been able to figure it out. Or that he hadn't been right. That was in the past now, though. No use dwelling on that, because at least she was okay now, and at least... well, long story short, he didn't have to worry. When it came to Yuuya, however... he couldn't move on from that so easily. He'd felt so incredibly betrayed by that disappearance, if only because of the time and nature. And the fact that he didn't hear a word from Yuuya ever again. Nor did Yuuya, clearly, hear anything about him.

Yuuya, now having retreated elsewhere, though he wasn't sure where exactly, was emotionally exhausted. His death hadn't exactly been the most calm occurrence, and to immediately find himself on a train with no ticket to the afterlife, wash up here, become a member of a royal court, and be told off by Sakuya... it really was too much. But, he collected himself quickly. He was dead now, anyway, and not in Hell, so things could only get better from here. Sakuya was right to be annoyed with him, and he'd rather it stayed annoyance over abandonment than whatever emotion it could turn to if he knew the whole story.

So he threw on a smile, as he so often did, and took off at a lazier stroll (quite the contrast to his prior speed) to see if he could run into Anghel or Hitori again.


	18. Chapter 18

Soon enough, Yuuya didn't encounter Anghel or Hitori; rather, he encountered Anghel AND Hitori, who were still conversing near the train station by the time Yuuya got back there.

"Oh, Yuuya. You're back. How did it go?" Hitori asked, frowning, given that he didn't quite expect Sakuya to be jumping in joy. They'd never talked very much; and in life, what Hitori had seen of him in math class was enough to give him the general assumption that it wouldn't turn out for the best when Yuuya tried talking to him again after thirty years.

"Terribly," Yuuya answered with a bright smile, "Just awful. He's upset that I left all those years ago and wants nothing to do with me. Not that I can say I blame him very much. It will be a long and arduous journey, to earn even his tolerance, let alone his forgiveness."

"It is his loss." Anghel responded, crossing his arms, "He who does not appreciate all that you have gone through. He who does not know he would be without you whether you stayed or left."

"He won't even talk to me long enough for me to try defending myself, but even if I had the chance I doubt I would take it. Sakuya may be at times rude and arrogant, but he is a person of morals. I would prefer him think I am a member of the dark court as a result of forsaking him than for him to hear of my truer misdeeds."

"Hm." Hitori nodded, understanding the sentiment. He had been behaving the same way towards Kazuaki himself, now that he thought about it. Lying by omission; if Nageki was right about that really being a sort of lie, then he supposed he was one of the nastiest liars around.

"Black light of tranquility," Anghel turned, addressing Hitori, "You seem perturbed by this statement. Might it be you hide such similar sinister secrets?"

"Not exactly," Hitori shrugged, "I'm certain that if anybody here was to give much thought to my mannerisms they would easily figure it out. I haven't told a lie in all my life and afterlife, though I have lied by remaining silent in certain matters."

"Haven't told a lie?" Yuuya asked, momentarily very perplexed before shaking his head and dismissing the thought, "Well, whatever you say. In any case, it was quite a shock to hear that you'd died, you know. I never took you for the type."

"Not the type to die?"

"Not the type to die like that," Yuuya answered, "I saw on the news, about a recently released felon committing suicide off that bridge. Given the time, and the place, it really could have only been you, though they didn't release your name. The news coverage was more focused on the fact that the town was drafting plans to replace the bridge. Apparently somebody drove a car off of it accidentally some years prior to your suicide, so it really was the last straw," He explained, glad to take his mind off of Sakuya, "Speaking of you sparking events, it was your arrest that prompted that receptionist to tell the police about my little visit that one day. Earning me a warrant. In any case, though, back to the point at hand. Why is it that you threw yourself away so?"

"Because there was nothing left for me to do," Hitori answered simply, "The very same reason as the both of you, isn't it? There was nothing ahead of me then. No reason to bother. The people I cared about most were both dead, and it was, directly or indirectly, my fault. I never wanted to keep going once Nageki and Kazuaki were dead, and it's not like I had any unfinished business to attend to. Everything that could tie me to that world was gone. It's simple. Just as you used death to escape a future that would only hurt you more."

"You... how do you know of how we died?" Anghel questioned, "I did not think the line between these worlds was so easily blurred!"

"It's not. I only figured it out," Hitori responded with a slight shrug, "You said that your planisphere, Anghel, faded away. That means what you did wrong had to have been in your final moments of life. I'm guessing you did something which ended up killing both you and Yuuya, the latter fact stealing your planisphere from you when taken into consideration with any petty moral fallacies throughout your earlier life... at least, that's what I think."

"Well, you are correct. However, that deduction will not earn you any answers; I would rather not speak of how we died," Yuuya responded, crossing his arms, "In any case, I believe we will enjoy being here now, and I am exhausted, so I am wondering where residents live, exactly."

"Right. I relate, on the exhaustion level, so I apologize if I happen to fall asleep in the process of showing you there..." He chuckled sheepishly, and Yuuya couldn't help but enjoy it. This was the same Mr. Uzune that he'd known way back when, and maybe Holiday Star wouldn't be so bad a place. It was so beautiful, and it seemed everyone was happy for the most part. Hitori led them to an area with several lovely houses, "This is the residential district. Everyone who lives on Holiday Star lives here. It's very nice, isn't it? Everything here is. Kazuaki did a wonderful job."

"Nageki was saying that he's the one who made this place..." Yuuya wondered aloud, "How did he manage such a feat?"

"Well," Hitori shrugged, "I'm not quite sure. All I know is he always said he'd someday find a place where everything was okay. I suppose he didn't find one, so he made it himself."

"That is a touching tale," Anghel responded, "But alas, I am also too weary to truly appreciate it."

Hitori apologized, and told the two of them to choose somewhere. They picked the strange and less-than-pretty apartment building, or well, one of its apartments. Whatever floats their boat. Hitori yawned after they parted ways, and left to go take a nap himself. He wondered if maybe those two were tired as a result of being members of his court; it was certainly plausible enough. In any case, he was glad that they were here.

They'd both been through plenty enough, in life. They deserved a rest. Everybody did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In between Chapter 18 and Chapter 19, you'll find an additional story by CainReprobus. It's not technically necessary to understand the future chapters but it CERTAINLY does help, and it is considered to be canon. I would not recommend skipping it!  
> http://archiveofourown.org/works/4999918


	19. Chapter 19

The thought occurred to Hitori that he had been, for lack of a better word, aloof. Far too aloof, more aloof than a king ought to be. He had kept to himself for a while now, since the incident five years ago. He'd withdrawn into a sort of shell and taken the members of his court along with him. Yuuya stopped trying to talk to Sakuya. Anghel stopped trying to talk to Hiyoko; as well as Nageki, who Hitori had also started to avoid despite no real desire to do so.

Nageki had handled himself, though. Handled the situation, maybe not so well, but he had certainly gotten out on the other side of it not so much worse for wear. Even those who were directly involved were not too badly injured by the encounter, the only person outside of his own court to get harmed was that dreaming woman who had, for reasons unknown to him, volunteered to help. The Light Court was fine, the ally and the enemy injured, but The Dark Court...

Well, they'd nearly been destroyed. It was a failure on his part, he was sure of it. He failed to protect anybody in life and it seemed he couldn't succeed in death either. It really was... Pathetic. That's what he was and that was what he'd always been. This place, somehow, was only more proof of that at times. It was wonderful, so wonderful, but served as a constant reminder of his failures nonetheless. Nageki was here, because he couldn't keep his promise to keep him safe. Kazuaki was here because he'd done something terrible. Three of his past students died while he was in prison. And now this. Now the disconnect between his court and the others, a wedge driven by tragedy.

Even Kazuaki was having trouble getting as close to Hitori now. He could be close to him physically, of course; it was easy to follow somebody around who was never teleporting, always just walking, but he found himself unable to get particularly close to him anymore. To coax any sort of interaction at all out of Hitori seemed a near-impossible feat, and to see anybody like this was worrying. To see him like this was extra worrying.

Five years. Five years wasn't so much time, anymore. Nights were easy to float through and easy to carry on, and when eternity stretched ahead months easily melted away. However, five years was just enough time that Anghel and Yuuya were just starting to recover from the ordeal. Just enough time, also, for Kazuaki to grow truly worried over Hitori's state of being. He'd known that state well, when he was alive, and it had seemed to disappear when he arrived on Holiday Star. Sadness and depression were two very different things, and it seemed that Hitori now carried both as a result of his perceived failure.

He'd slept even more than before, after the incident, and it got to a point where some nights Hitori wouldn't wake up at all. Sometimes, it was a few nights in a row. That certainly wasn't healthy, but then, he was already dead. Starving was only a discomfort and a pain here, not dangerous. Just as any other need. Going without it still caused the same hurt, but tolerating that hurt was plausible. Kazuaki couldn't even make the point of this behavior being bad for his health, because what was health on Holiday Star? And if he was to say that, wouldn't he be a hypocrite too?

And for those five years, the door to the lantern's room hadn't appeared. Kazuaki sighed as he leaned against the picture that stood in its place, staring down at the design of the floor. It was so beautiful, before, but now it seemed almost dull. The whole palace did, now that he thought about it. Outside was just as sparkling and vivid as always, but in here everything had become somewhat lackluster.

"Your Highness?" A voice questioned, and he looked up only to see Nageki entering the room.

"Kazuaki is fine." He said softly, holding his arms around himself, "Call me Kazuaki. I do not want to be The King right now."

"Kazuaki, then..." Nageki hesitated before stepping further into the room, "I want to talk to you about Hitori."

"Hitori is only sad because his court fell into shambles on that day. He will be fine. He is fine. We are all fine here," He insisted, nails digging into his arms through the fabric of his shirt.

"Except that we aren't, Kazuaki. You're not fine. Hitori's not fine. Yuuya and Anghel aren't fine. Pretending everything is okay won't fix anything," Nageki's tone softened moments later, "I'm... worried about them. All three of them, but I think they're getting better. Except Hitori. I'm worried about Hitori."

"Ha. That's funny." His voice was low and, for possibly the first time ever, sarcastic, "You and I, worry about Hitori? Nageki, you are as silly as always. Hitori is the competent one. He is the one who's good at everything. He worries about us. We do not worry about him."

"It's because he worries about people that I'm worried about him, Kazuaki," He strained to get his point across, coming to the conclusion that something about Kazuaki was off. Slipping. He was starting to act the same way he had before Hitori arrived, which was only that much more unsettling, "His court was put under assault and he was asleep. You don't think he's going to have some sort of huge guilt complex over it? This is Hitori we're talking about. He went to prison for nineteen years willingly when he killed you."

"When I killed me. When he lied and said that he killed me." Kazuaki stated, but then dropped to the floor and shook his head, tears falling now, "But that only makes you more right, Nageki... He does not forgive himself even when he is told to..."

"Maybe it's time for a change of interaction. Maybe you could understand Hitori more if you were to speak with his court, and maybe Hitori could be cheered up by speaking with yours?" Nageki's tone was deadpan again as he continued, "After all. We're such bright and happy people."

"I understand Hitori the best of anybody. I love him." Kazuaki insisted, almost harshly, through his crying.

"..." Nageki just stood there before going on, "In any case. Aside from that bit, doesn't it sound like a good idea? The courts are much too separate from each other right now. You and Hitori's relationship can't go on being the only link."

"Nageki is..." He took a few deep breaths, trying to collect himself before standing up, "You are. You are correct and this is a good idea that we should try. I will go and try to wake Hitori."


	20. Chapter 20

"Higure?" Kazuaki asked as he approached the first member of Hitori's court that he'd been able to locate, in an area he rarely went to himself. A cliff that hung out over the milky way, littered with flowers and covered with sparkling grass. Anghel was sitting on the edge, dangling his feet out into space. Though he might seem the sort of person to swing his legs, and usually he would, he was just sitting there. He looked up when Kazuaki arrived.

"Your Highness?" He questioned, his voice unusually quiet and subdued.

"I... haven't talked to you in a long time," Kazuaki started, "A very long time. You never really spoke to me since your arrival, and prior to that..."

"Mm," He nodded, crossing his arms.

"But, um. Back when we were both alive, and before you disappeared like that, you used to do very well in my class. I never said anything about it, but you always got high marks and I'd never seen any essays on the same topics you picked..."

"Of course," Anghel responded, picking a flower then tossing it out into the void, "Language and literature are exalted things in all worlds, I would not disrespect it so by slacking in a class on such topics. It is a foolish thing to do, insulting practices of old..."

"You're probably the only person out there who thinks that way... the other people who did well in my class were mostly just the all-around good students. But that might be that I wasn't a great teacher. In any case, you did very well." Kazuaki shrugged, taking a seat. He got dizzy when he looked over the edge of the cliff, so he averted his eyes.

"Is there a particular reason you are speaking to me, Pied Piper?" His voice was only one of confusion, not hostility.

"Yes," He sighed, "It's worry. I'm worried. Everyone is worried."

"Huh," Anghel muttered, staring down at his knees, "A worthy reason indeed, but not everyone is worried, not at all. There are many here who do not care for me, or The Remaining Apostle, or The Dark King."

"The remaining apostle? What happened to the other one?"

"Edel Blau does not speak to me so much now. She did come to my aid in the hour when the stars fell silent, but aside, she is beyond such silly things as demon spores and apostles. I feel as though she means to care, still, but there is the insurmountable bridge between us now; Though we traverse the same dimensional plane, we are not of the same world. She walks with a proven innocence, while I bear the weight of my sins."

"You feel she's too grown up for that?" Kazuaki asked, then shook his head with a soft smile, "How silly. Nobody is ever too old for anything. I thought I was too old for crying, but that is just not true."

"You speak oddly, Pied Piper..."

"As do you."

"Maybe that is so," Anghel still hadn't gotten back to full steam in his speech since that happened, though he was trying, trying hard to pull back the shattered shards of his prior recovery and piece them together once more, "But I do not recall such patterns from you when you were alive. My fallacies may be explained when considering the burdensome memories which hold my mind in dark chains, but what reason have you to alteration?"

"Hm," He thought for a moment, "The Light King... I. I believe it to be a result of The Dark King's current state. It is as if we are two parts of a whole. Without him I am without most memories, running on emotion. It is an inconvenient truth. He holds the key to The K- my. My memories."

"That hardly sounds healthy."

"No, it doesn't, does it? But it is okay. Hitori will become better. You are becoming better. So is Sakazaki. So Hitori will become better. And when he is okay, I am also okay. I trust him."

"So you do, Pied Piper," Anghel sighed as he stood up, tossing one more flower off the cliff before turning around, standing there silently for a moment before speaking again, "But, I do wonder, how it is that you died, if you trust him so much. Lies and death go hand in hand more often than truth and death, after all. It is a law of old."

"No, no. I do trust him. He did not lie to me, not ever. I was a foolish person, that is all. When he told me that he didn't want me dead after all, it was already too late. Too late for me. It is my own fault, that is all. He never said a word about killing me. But I assumed and paid the price. I hurt him by leaving, but now it is fine. We are both here on Holiday Star. That man will never be allowed back here, and I do not think there is anybody else for you to worry so about. So Holiday Star is a good and wonderful place again. No problems now. No problems once you feel better, that is."

"This... you do speak truths, Pied Piper. I wonder still at the bond between you and my king, but I do not wonder at your intentions. You are one of light, deserving of your royal title in that domain. I thank you, for speaking to me. It was not unpleasant, but I do not think you wish to partake in it again, so I shall bid you farewell." 

And he was gone. Kazuaki wondered if anything had really been accomplished here, but... well, at least he felt like it was worthwhile.

Next, to speak to Yuuya. This would be a bit more difficult given the fact that he had no idea where he was; despite being the creator and ruler of Holiday Star, he wasn't omniscient. He could only really tell where people were when they were outside, so Yuuya could be in any mystery building anywhere. Although, Kazuaki supposed a good bet would be to look for him at the apartment he and Anghel shared. There was a good chance Yuuya wouldn't be there, but in this case, it seemed that he was.

"Oh," He said simply as he opened the door, then stepped to the side to let Kazuaki in, "What do you need?"

"Nothing, only to talk. How are you doing?" He asked with concern.

"Awful," Yuuya said this almost cheerfully, smiling as if he wasn't really saying these particular words, "Terrible, horrible, no good at all."

"Well... that's not a good thing. Why are you smiling?"

"Because if I wasn't smiling, it would be even worse," Yuuya explained, "Honestly I must say that if you ever see me not smiling, it means something is really and truly incredibly wrong. Right now, things are only very bad, not quite to that degree. After all, it has been five years, and I am getting better each day that passes. In fact, I can say that I am hardly reeling from my injuries anymore."

"If not your injuries, what is the problem?" 

"I didn't say I'm entirely over it. When I think about it, I can still feel the pain of that first shot. It was the clearest pain that night, anyhow. But that's not what troubles me," Yuuya shrugged, "Rather, it's only the memory of how it occurred. The fact that he was able to come here. To find Anghel again. He's not the only enemy I made when I was alive, and if he could come here, then who's to say nobody else will?"

"Well he will not come again. And I do not think Doctor Iwamine is looking for revenge."

"How do you know that?"

"Because he has been here."

"What?"

"The doctor was here a few nights before the incident. He did not do very much. He visited the restaurant and spoke to Ryouta. He said that he was sorry. Ryouta asked what he was sorry for. He said everything. Then he waited for the next train and he left."

"I see," Yuuya pondered this information, then visibly relaxed, "Well, that's certainly a relief. So despite that breach, Holiday Star seems to be safe, at least for Anghel and I. That certainly takes a weight from my shoulders; it's much easier to improve in mental health without the fear of something happening again."

"Speaking of Anghel, he does seem to be recovering surprisingly well. He speaks normally when upset, correct? His speech was full of his usual strangeness."

"It's a step, but I'm not sure he'll ever recover completely. After thirty years he'd just barely been okay, and this just threw him all the way back to square one. He may talk the way we expect him to, but not with the energy that once went along with it," Yuuya shook his head, "But speaking of such things, you are beginning to talk more regularly again. Does that mean my king is recovering?"

"Well, it must," Kazuaki smiled a bit, "I'm very glad for it. I was worried about him. He's been more sad than I expected he'd be since he got to Holiday Star. I just want him to be happy. You understand, don't you?"

"Better than you'll ever know," Yuuya chuckled softly, turning away with his arms crossed. He understood far too well; perhaps he felt it even stronger than Kazuaki did. True, they both wanted only the best for the people they loved, but Kazuaki had not seen Hitori so terribly broken as Yuuya had seen Anghel. Kazuaki had tried to give up his life for Hitori's happiness, but Yuuya had done worse than that for Anghel's sake. Yet somehow, it still seemed clear to him that more good could come of his relationship than could ever come of that of The Kings.


	21. Chapter 21

Meanwhile, Hitori was having his own conversations with the members of the opposite court.

"So... Your Majesty..." Hiyoko started as she sat down across from him at the table in the room where they'd been told to meet with him. He could easily leave and avoid this, but didn't quite feel up to it, "I know I'm supposed to be here to cheer you up or something, but Nageki said I should just try and get to know you better, so I've got a question for you."

"Well, ask away. I was your teacher once. Answering your questions is what I do,” Hitori spoke blankly, “I don’t care if it doesn’t cheer me up. I don’t care about that.”

“Okay, good, because I’m really curious. It’s been proven for certain now, right? That the trains have all been here before, at some point, and dead people who stay on the trains show up here every thirty years or so?”

“Yes… That does seem to be true…”

“And clearly even people who died on the same day might not be at the same time, if we assume that Mr. Bishikikouji and Dr. Iwamine died at the same time. And, they weren’t the only two who disappeared that day… And you covered it up…” As she said this, Hitori began to worry if she might have figured out Yuuya’s secret- He’d already determined it was a secret, that Hiyoko hadn’t ever seen it on the news, “So I have to ask. Hitori Uzune. Did you kill them? Did you kill all four of those people?”

“...” Hitori just stared at her, and she stared back, silence hanging between them. Now, he didn’t enjoy lying. He didn’t make a habit of it, as he so often assured those around him. However, if he told the truth here, Hiyoko very well could come to the conclusion he thought she already had. So he lied, just this one lie, and it was to keep the trust of another, so did it really count? “Yes.”

“Hm,” Hiyoko crossed her arms and pouted a bit, shaking her head, “I don’t believe you.”

“You’re the one who asked me the question in the first place.”

“Yeah, but I can tell that you’re lying. You’re really bad at it,” She sighed, “But of course, if you’re willing to lie and say that you did kill them, it must be some real big secret. I can sympathize with that, so I’ll let it slide.”

“Well, thank you, I guess,” He shrugged, crossing his arms, “I guess it’s a good thing that I’m bad at lying, given that I don’t want to make a habit of it.”

“It’s funny, actually…” Hiyoko added, “I could only really tell because I thought about the possibility you could lie to me about this. Any other time I’d probably figure immediately that if anybody said you were a criminal, that you were. You don’t seem trustworthy at all, and yet… but that’s how you were able to convince the police that you killed Mr. Nanaki, isn’t it? You know, I don’t remember if I mentioned this before, but I stopped keeping up with the news after that. I never really wanted to hear about… my teacher, killing another one of my teachers.”

“I’m sorry you had to hear about such a thing, Hiyoko,” He apologized, sighing.

“It’s no big deal. I guess this just now sort of proved that I can trust you, in a weird way. When Mr. Nanaki said you didn’t kill him, I wasn’t so keen on believing him, but I feel like now that I know how bad you are at lying I don’t have to worry. In any case, I think Ryouta has to talk to you now? So, seeya!” She waved cheerfully as she stood up and left, followed immediately by the boy in question, who took the same seat she’d just been in.

“Uh. Hi,” Ryouta greeted him, “Sorry I never really went to your math class when we were alive? I know Hiyoko and Sakuya both did sometimes so I’m sort of the combo breaker here…”

“It’s fine. Math class is a thing of thirty-six years ago, after all. I can’t say I care much about that sort of thing anymore. You… run a restaurant here on Holiday Star, do you not?”

“That’s right. Well, I don’t do much, only collect the memories to add more dishes to the menu, but I do. I meet a lot of interesting people, it’s nice,” Ryouta smiled, “You should visit sometime. Not to toot my own horn, but I can’t say it isn’t a nice place.”

“I think I will,” He nodded slowly.

“Sorry, I… don’t really know what else to say. Nageki said that you and Mr. Nanaki can’t go on being the only real link between the courts, but… you can’t just decide to become friends with anybody, can you? If we don’t have anything else to talk about…”

“That’s right. And I don’t suppose Sakuya is all too keen on speaking to me either? It’s all right, I’m sure Nageki will understand that this simply wasn’t the best idea. Besides, I almost feel like this was more of an excuse to get Kazuaki to speak with my court than for me to speak with his.”

“Congratulations, you figured it out,” Nageki said as he stepped into the room, resisting the urge to clap slowly, “You can go, Ryouta, it’s fine. Thank you for your cooperation.”

Ryouta nodded and left as Hitori looked to Nageki, “Why bother with something this convoluted?”

“Because it was the only way to get Kazuaki to do it. And I had to go through with it, because there was still the small chance that interacting with such positive people would improve your mood. Doubtful, but still. Plus I wanted to wake you up, I need to talk to you.”

“You didn’t have to do this to w-”

“Yes I did. Anytime I said I wanted to talk to you, you just went right back to sleep. You better not bail on me this time, Hitori.”

“I won’t…” Hitori sighed, “This is about my hermitlike behavior as of late, is it not?”

“Precisely. It’s unlike you to be so… not meddlesome,” Nageki glanced away, “I thought that sort of thing would be a relief, but turns out it’s just unsettling.”

“I failed to protect my court the one time it could possibly matter,” Hitori muttered, “I’ve never been able to protect anybody, so why would I even keep trying? I failed you, I failed my court, I can’t even begin to put into words just how much I failed Kazuaki.”

“You don’t have to try. I know. I saw everything that happened,” Nageki’s eyes glinted somewhat, “But I’ve convinced everybody to put that in the past. I’ve put that in the past, even knowing the whole truth. Kazuaki never felt the need to put it in the past because he never held it against you in the first place. You’re the only person who still cares, Hitori. I want you to forget about it.”

“I can’t forget about it, Nageki. I made a promise.”


	22. Chapter 22

“Nageki, you remember, back then, don’t you?” Hitori was whispering now, holding his arms around himself.

“I’m not so sure I do anymore, Hitori. Back then, it was a really long time ago. I was still a kid. I could hardly remember that time too well when I was alive, let alone now. Why don’t you enlighten me?”

“When I turned eighteen, I didn’t much want to leave the orphanage. I was worried about you, and everyone else I was leaving behind. Usually when people left there they were concerned over handling themselves on their own, but I’d already been tutoring for a while and making money, so it was pretty obvious I could handle myself and end up as a teacher. I was worried about the rest of you,” Hitori sighed, shaking his head, “And you said you wanted to come with me. How could I refuse? I knew I could take care of you. I thought I could. I promised I would. Then I couldn’t.”

“Hitori…”

“Sometimes they tried to visit me. Nothing from them at all in the years before, but as soon as I ended up in prison... I never went to see them, though. Hoppe was the only one who tried more than three times. Every year she asked to see me,” Hitori muttered, “I can only imagine how disappointed they all were. I promised I would keep you safe, and I failed. I failed and then I…”

“Hitori, the only person who’s disappointed in you anymore is yourself,” Nageki cut him off, “It’s been a long time, if they ever did think like that, they’ve forgotten by now. If we ever happen to meet any of them again, I’ll just tell them the truth. That it’s my fault. That you went so incredibly over-the-top in keeping me safe normally, the only way this could have happened was because I didn’t tell you I was sick again. I’m the only one responsible for my own death. And don’t go blaming Kazuaki again, don’t go blaming yourself. If I want to keep a secret, I will keep that secret. I told him not to tell. So he wouldn’t. That’s how he is, always afraid of repercussions. How he’s always been. It’s saying something that he even considered telling you. I know if you knew, I probably would have survived. But we can’t go on about what ifs anymore, Hitori. After what happened, nothing else really has the potential to go wrong here. Your court is going to move on, and you should too.”

“Before this happened, nobody thought anything could go wrong at all. I’m not keen on believing you.”

“Nothing can go wrong now, Hitori. I’ve been linked to Kazuaki the whole time he’s been talking with your court, not that he really knows that. Don’t worry, I still can’t read minds at will, he just didn’t notice that I didn’t connect the last link with him. Yuuya no longer worries. Tohri won’t be back, and Shuu isn’t out for blood. Whatever that means,” Nageki smirked knowingly. He had figured out, partially, what must have happened, though he was still entirely unclear on the details, “In any case, I can’t see any more trouble coming up. At least, if you do take my advice and put the past in the past.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if you keep dwelling on things like this, Kazuaki is bound to find out someday. Find out about everything that happened, and I bet he’d be really upset to find out just how much you ignored his wishes. He was upset enough to learn you went to prison, after all. If you keep on like this, he just might find out some details on death that you’d rather keep under wraps.”

“I guess you’re right,” Hitori sighed, rubbing his forehead, “It’s hard, though. Hard to move on from everything that happened. Hard not to blame myself, especially when…”

“Especially when what, Hitori?”

“Especially when you told me it was, for those nineteen years.”

\------  
“So what are you in for, kid?” Somebody asked, and somebody else answered with a shrug.

“Got caught for shoplifting. A lot of shoplifting. I ran a shoplifting blog, then all the shoplifting blogs got reported to the government. Whoops,” The person seemed pretty careless about the whole matter, “I’ve only got like two years in here, though, so that doesn’t matter so much. And I think my cellmate’s not gonna be an issue, he’s been asleep since I got here.”

“Asleep, you say…?” There was more hesitance in that tone than the new inmate expected to hear, “There’s only one person here who sleeps that much. Does your cell have any particular smell to it?”

“Now that you mention it, it smells kind of like bleach? I just thought it had been recently cleaned, though.”

“Dude. You’re with Bleach-guy,” The more seasoned inmate shook his head, “Never thought they’d give Uzune a cellmate. He’s so volatile.”

“U-Uzune? Like, Hitori Uzune? That guy who pled guilty to murdering his boyfriend a few years back?” The new inmate’s voice now shook in fear. What were they thinking, putting a thief in the same room as a murderer?

“The very same. He doesn’t talk to anybody but himself, but he’s always looking scary when he’s awake. Never stopped smelling like bleach, and sometimes he just looks around him all terrified before starting yell at nothing, like he’s got hallucinations or some deal like that going on. I wouldn’t wanna get on his bad side, seems like he could snap again at any moment.”

~

_Hitori._

He shook his head. It wasn’t real, it couldn’t be. Nageki wasn’t here, it was impossible. Kazuaki wasn’t here either. They were dead, dead, he’d killed them both. It was his fault, his fault they were dead.

_Hitori… Why did you have to go and do that to me…?_

**Me too, Hitori. Why? Why…?**

Not possible. Not possible. He was hearing his guilty conscience, that was all, and yet there they were. The voices that sounded so real. The image of Nageki had faded, the image of Kazuaki, he had to think a moment to remember exactly what they both looked like, but their voices were crystal clear. Plain as day. Just the same as always, but the words were different. So horrible. So cruel. So entirely true.

_You really are the worst type of person there is._

**Just look around you. You’re surrounded by criminals, and they are all afraid of you. That’s because you’re the worst of them all.**

_Why would you kill the people you loved?_

**Why would you kill the people who loved you?**

They wouldn’t stop no matter how much he shouted, and he knew how that made him look, but he couldn’t very well hold his tongue when it got to this point. Got this bad. He needed to defend himself from the words of these echoes of his past.

**_Why are you still alive????_ **

Covering his ears did nothing.

He could still hear them.

**_We’re waiting for you._**


	23. Chapter 23

Nageki had never felt anything like that before. Never been capable of anything like that before, but it had happened so suddenly that he could hardly even sort out what exactly it was. He’d stepped closer to Hitori, and suddenly he was viewing a memory; but it wasn’t anybody’s memory. Hitori hadn’t even seen that conversation, but Nageki did, only to be suddenly booted into Hitori’s actual memory of the hallucinations it seemed he’d endured for the entirety of his time in prison.

It was horrible. He couldn’t believe that Hitori had never mentioned that before; he knew that he’d had hallucinations related to his narcolepsy in the past, but never anything that bad. Then again, how could it have been that bad when Nageki was still alive, if the reason for it being so bad was Nageki and Kazuaki’s deaths? He just stood there for a few minutes in shock, unable to process what had just occurred. It wasn’t memory viewing, not exactly, and he could only assume it was a result of his training in mind reading and sensing on top of that particular skill, leading him to now have this strange ability to… understand.

Understanding was the only way to describe what had happened. He’d been confused by what Hitori said, and a mutual desire for him to understand gave him the ability to do so. Between the memory and that other scene, he comprehended what Hitori meant, and was now able to handle it a little better. He took a deep breath, then crossed his arms, “Hitori, I’m sorry that had to happen, but you have to know I wouldn’t blame you like that. Not for my death.”

“I know you wouldn’t. I’ve always known that you wouldn’t, I knew it wasn’t real, but to hear that for all that time… It sounded just like you. And really, it was just putting a voice to how I felt myself. I blamed me for your death, so something in my mind decided that you blamed me too. I can’t say I’ve stopped feeling that way, but at least the hallucinations have,” Hitori mumbled, looking away, “That’s only because the real you is here, though. And the real Kazuaki, too.”

“You really did get messed up by all of that, didn’t you?” Nageki said softly, putting a hand on Hitori’s shoulder, “And here I thought it just made you numb. You can talk to me about this, you know. You can’t just worry about the effect you have on others while ignoring how you feel yourself anymore. I have to do something to repay you for looking after me all that time, after all. The least I can do is be here for you to talk to. I already know what happened, so you don’t have to hold your punches either. You can say everything on your mind.”

“I don’t need to. But if I ever do, I will. I’m feeling… better than I was, anyway, and as my court recovers I think I will too. Slowly, but I will. Thank you, Nageki,” He sighed, standing up, “I’m sure everything will turn out for the best, eventually. After all, this is Holiday Star. Nothing really happens here. That incident was only the exception that makes the rule.”

Hitori was trying to convince himself more than Nageki with that last statement, still not too keen on the idea of a paradise. He’d hardly trusted in the idea before, and the unfortunate visitor had only crushed that idea beneath a great and rude heel. He could pretend, though, and it wasn’t exactly a lie when he said that. It was a hope. Hope that maybe the light court was right when they said it would turn out okay. He thought often about the differences between them, but he could never quite draw a line. Optimism against pessimism? Kazuaki had certainly only become this optimistic in death. Only the dark court was cynical? No, Nageki proved that wrong.

Really, the only real distinction was the planispheres. The planispheres and the general outlook, he supposed. The light court did seem much more prone to leave problems in the past. Planispheres, however, that was all that really decided it. Were they good people, or bad people?

He considered himself a bad person. There were all sorts of factors that made him certain that he could in no way be considered worthy of anything. His court, however… Yuuya Sakazaki was not a bad person. Neither of the people he’d killed had planispheres either, Hitori knew that for a fact. There was nothing short of noble in Yuuya’s disposition, but the universe seemed to think otherwise. And Anghel… well, to choose a “coward’s death” like that didn’t quite seem cause enough to Hitori, but it wasn’t like he could control that. Anghel would have gotten one, up until his last moments. That should have been a good enough show of character, but clearly, it was not.

Hitori was sure he was the only really bad person in his court; then again, Nageki didn’t think he was all too terrible, did he? Even knowing everything that had happened. Then, nobody else knew, not even Anghel and Yuuya, so he couldn’t take any other opinions with a grain of salt. Now that he thought about it, he only knew so much about those two himself. Perhaps they had their surface explanations for the lack of a planisphere, and something deeper, just like himself. Well, aside from the fact that nobody in the light court even knew those reasons. Anghel was a sinner. Yuuya left his half-brother in the dust. That was a passable reason for them. The light court was… awfully gullible, but what reason had they not to be trusting?

Well, they certainly distrusted Hitori enough, but they didn’t seem to give a second thought to Anghel and Yuuya’s intentions. That was because they knew them better, of course, and they’d never seen the news story on the supposed kidnapping. Even if they had, they probably would have been less keen to believe it than they were to accept that Hitori had killed Kazuaki. When it came to Yuuya’s own spot of murder… well, he didn’t know how they might react, so it was better kept a secret for the time being after all. In any case, it was only something that he found interesting.

Nageki was the only person here who could possibly have all of the answers, and even then, he certainly wasn’t strong enough to do so yet. He couldn’t view memories of death, excluding Hitori’s and Kazuaki’s. He still needed consent to see memories, even with the strange understanding ability he’d just acquired, it was still based in a desire on both sides for him to comprehend. Maybe one day, perhaps, but for the time being he was still limited.

Mystery still hung around the life and death of everybody here, when it came down to it. Hitori had secrets. His court had secrets. The light court did too, and Kazuaki… had no secrets of his own, but still, nobody was quite clear on how his death had occurred. Not even Kazuaki himself, really. The memory of the incident was a confused one, full of adrenaline, an unclear progression of events- but he held firm in his idea of what had happened, and nobody was going to tell him otherwise.


	24. Chapter 24

This morning echoed another morning from a time long past.

It was a few days after Hitori’s mental health (and by association, Kazuaki’s speech patterns) had taken a turn for the better. Well, a few nights, and though this had the feel of a morning it was actually an evening. In any case, however, it reminded Kazuaki of another time long ago. It was just a few weeks before he died, and it was so similar, and yet… nearly the opposite. Just like he and Hitori. So similar, but still opposite. His eyes and hair were bright, while Hitori’s were dark. He was an antisocial coward who cried at the slightest provocation, but believed there was something better somewhere out there. And Holiday Star was that something better. Hitori was outgoing and friendly, always doing his best to help others while hiding his own emotions and cynical outlook on life. Kazuaki was considered a good person by the universe. Hitori was not.

Yet they shared a love so strong that Kazuaki could hardly begin to explain how he felt. Hitori had always been there to help him through everything, Hitori was the one thing that kept him going for as long as he’d been alive. And for all those opposites, they were still so much the same. They were both teachers, they were both fragile, they both cared too much about a lot of things and too little about others. They both hated themselves more than anybody else. They both thought the world around them wasn’t quite right. They both fought a losing battle to live and be happy, or even to be okay.

It was different now, though. These were meant to be happy nights, and they would be soon enough; unlike that morning so long ago, Kazuaki was certain that a brighter future awaited them. That time, he’d watched Hitori sleep in the glow of the sun shining through the curtains, but this time it was so dark he could hardly make out his form. Regardless of the difference in details, there was the same sort of peacefulness hanging in the air; no, it was better, because Kazuaki didn’t doubt his trust in Hitori anymore. Now, he knew everything there was to know about him; at least, as far as he could tell. Here on Holiday Star, there weren’t really secrets. Not between lovers, that is. He didn’t know much about Hitori’s court, but that was okay. He didn’t need to know if they didn’t want him to.

Kazuaki sighed softly to himself as he watched the faint outline of Hitori in the barely lit room, the only light at all filtered through the heavy curtains. Total blackout wasn’t quite a good idea, he would probably get lost trying to find the door, but as long as the light level never went beyond its current state Kazuaki would have no trouble sleeping. And Hitori, well, Hitori never had any trouble sleeping.

Kazuaki lay back down and wrapped his arms around Hitori, nuzzling into his hair and holding him close. He smelled faintly of strawberries, nothing like bleach. Why would he, anymore? He was just the same as he was back when they’d both been alive and something close to happy. Not the Hitori that Kazuaki knew in his final moments, and not the Hitori who spent nineteen years of his life in prison. On the outside, at least. On the inside, he was different, Kazuaki knew this. He was a much sadder person. More unapproachable. More likely that the bottled up emotions would pop their cork, and sometimes they did. It was frightening, almost, the spectacular difference between his usual blankness and the spontaneous anger that sometimes showed through.

It was never anger at anyone else, though. No, not since that day back then, Kazuaki had never seen Hitori become angry with anybody but himself. Given what had come of that anger when they were alive, when it was once directed at Kazuaki, he was relieved not to be on the receiving end of it again; but then, he was also worried about Hitori holding that position instead. He really was too hard on himself. He acted as if all the good he’d ever done for Nageki and Kazuaki when he was alive was worth nothing now, and that just wasn’t true. He’d done all he could, tried his best, kept the both of them going in different ways.

Time without Hitori was not good time at all, in Kazuaki’s opinion. He and Nageki had the star to themselves for a portion of time, and it was sad enough in that context. In paradise. To have been without Hitori in life, with all those responsibilities and problems, well, it seemed impossible. Nageki had known Hitori most of his life and couldn’t think of trying to live without him, despite his claims of independence. Kazuaki had tried living without Hitori, before meeting him, and it was horrible. Simply the worst. Though knowing Hitori ultimately didn’t keep him from killing himself, without him it would have been sooner. Sooner and with no happy memories.

Happy was what those memories were. For all the issues, for every tear he shed and every attempt on his own life, Kazuaki did consider his life with Hitori to have been a generally good one. It was a certain type of warmth, a comfort, maybe it was rose-tinted glasses looking back, but he didn’t want to remove them. Hitori understood him. That was the biggest thing, he figured. Hitori understood that he wasn’t as capable or as stable as others and he didn’t care. He rolled with the punches. He did those things which Kazuaki couldn’t and between them, they came up functioning. Somehow.

“Kazuaki…?” Hitori muttered as he stirred, starting to wake up.

“Good morning, Hitori,” He said cheerfully, holding him tighter, “Did you sleep well?”

“Of course I did.” Hitori was still mumbling, but he turned over to face Kazuaki, putting his hands on his cheeks, “How about you?”

“Yeah,” Kazuaki nodded, smiling, then chuckled a little and kissed Hitori quickly, “Me too. I only woke up a little while ago.”

“Only a little while ago? So you weren’t watching me sleep after all,” Hitori joked.

“Well, I was a little bit…” Kazuaki admitted, “But not really? It’s so dark in here I could barely even see you anyway. I can hardly see you even with you right here in front of my face…”

“Well, I can see you perfectly,” Hitori whispered, running one of his hands through Kazuaki’s hair.

“Hitori…” Kazuaki’s smile became a bit wobbly, “You’re making me blush…”

“I know. I can see you blushing,” Hitori smirked, then kissed his nose.

“Wait, you weren’t just joking around just now?” 

“Of course not. I don’t lie, Kazuaki. If I say I can see you, then I can see you,” He shrugged, “I guess I just have good night vision. Or maybe you’re just so beautiful that I can’t help but notice everything about you at all times.”

“Now you’re just flattering me…” Kazuaki trailed off, but kept smiling as he moved to sit up, though he grabbed one of Hitori’s hands. He didn’t want to be apart from him at all, right now. He didn’t exactly feel upset right now, but he felt weak. Scared of something unknown, some inexplicable feeling that if he let go of Hitori for too long he’d lose him.

“Maybe I am, but I do mean it,” Hitori responded as he too sat up, holding Kazuaki’s hand even tighter and leaning their foreheads together, “I love you, Kazuaki. I love you so much,” His voice was shaky, as if there was even more he was saying than what he actually said. Another apology. A heartfelt apology, and thanks for the forgiveness he certainly didn’t deserve.

“I love you too,” Kazuaki responded softly, then started shaking and crying, “I just don’t know what I would d-do without you… In the time before you came here I was so sad… no, not sad… I was glad that you were still alive, but I also missed you so much… I don’t work right on my own, Hitori. I need you here with me. You’re my better half. Really and truly.”

“I don’t like that saying,” His voice was almost blank, but became soft again when he continued, pressing his head against Kazuaki’s chest, “If I was your better half, that would make you my worse half, and that simply isn’t true at all. I need you. Without you I’m only a machine. Without you I only ever cared about protecting Nageki. Nothing else. Nothing at all. So I really do need you. I need to be with you and I want to know everything there is to know about you. I want to stay here with you and never make you sad again. I want to spend forever with you.”

And Kazuaki was happy.  
So was Hitori.  
That’s right, this was forever.  
This was an eternity that belonged to them.


	25. Chapter 25

Anghel was watching “My Little Pony”. To be more specific, he was watching season 2 episode 13 of My Little Pony Friendship is Magic, not out of any interest, but rather because that was what happened to be on. There were two other channels, of course, but there was nothing worthwhile on the local news at the moment (Only banter between a pair of citizens who had decided to become news anchors) and the third channel was playing a show which was far too full of nudity for Anghel’s current comfort. It had now been another year since the incident, a year since the kings had fallen back into themselves again, but one year was not so meaningful for his recovery. He and Yuuya were both still fairly withdrawn from the rest of the world.

They had made the decision, upon arriving, to relax for a while. They would take up jobs eventually, when they got too bored, but for the time being a low-energy life was the life they’d have liked to lead… then one year later, just as they’d begun to settle in, was the incident. Tohri had appeared and ruined it all; no, no, not quite. Ruining it all would have been if he’d succeeded, if Yuuya had been erased from existence and Anghel taken away to be kept by evil incarnate as his “masterpiece, princess” then everything really would have been ruined. That would have been true rock bottom. As it was, this was only a setback. A gigantic setback.

For the first year, they’d relaxed. For the next six, they hid. There was nothing particular to hide from, given that the incitor of that issue was gone and wouldn’t be returning, and anyone else who might have been out for Yuuya’s blood… wasn’t. At least, as far he’d been informed. It wasn’t hiding from further disaster, but hiding from moving forward. Harder than working through it would be talking to any of the others at this point. They’d all gotten involved. They all wondered exactly what could have caused the incident. Anghel and Yuuya weren’t certain they could avoid telling the truth in such a state as they were in, so it was better not to talk at all. Even when the light king had spoken with them, it was nervewracking to keep the secret.

But they couldn’t explain it. No, not at all, it was entirely impossible. Maybe it was true that if the others knew they could help, would help. But there was still that fear, and talking about it would only make the pain worse in the moment. They could wait. Waiting wasn’t so hard, and every day that passed was another step towards recovery, wasn’t it? Memories naturally faded as time went by, but did that even apply when those very memories were relived every time they closed their eyes? Sleep was something they’d needed much more of since coming to Holiday Star, but it had also become something worth fearing. Anghel had finally stopped having nightmares only a few months before he’d died, but that level of recovery had gone right down the drain at the same time that Yuuya first started having nightmares of his own.

It was funny, that they could have nightmares even here. Even dead, even on the star which was a travel destination for those who dreamed. Then, when they did have a sleep without nightmares, they were altogether free of dreams. Perhaps, then, dreams and nightmares were two entirely different things. Dreams were a wandering of the mind, but nightmares served only to destroy from within. That must have been the case.

Yuuya rarely had nightmares when he was alive, but they’d always been the same back then. A failure on his part, that is; never quite exactly the same, but always with the same theme. A graveyard with a dreaded name engraved. Walking into a room he’d never even been in, the room where Anghel had been photographed, only to see the backdrops stained red with blood. Walking into the infirmary and being just too slow, slightly too slow, Shuu making good on his word to kill him first. Entering Tohri’s office only to be dragged off by law enforcement while the monster waved tauntingly goodbye. He had them maybe twice a year, and though he always woke up sweating, he calmed down easily from those. Couldn’t worry Anghel.

Now, there were days when they both stayed awake after the first hour of sleep proved too horrible. Yuuya didn’t have nightmares like those anymore. His nightmares were now echoes of the pain he’d felt that night, the throbbing. The aching. The blinding. The sharpness and the dullness and every nuance of his injuries in between. He’d wake up and it would stop hurting, but he’d run his hands over his scars and shiver and go into the living room to watch television instead, and maybe if he happened to fall asleep midway through an episode it would keep him from falling so strongly that he got hurt again.

This was not one of those days, though. Rather, it was night. Nine PM, which was early for either of them to be awake and certainly too early for their king to even think of waking up for another hour yet. He’d given a suggestion that the two of them were keen to take up; stay inside unless Hitori was awake. And they’d know, too. They could always tell that much, some sort of connection between the members of the court. Yuuya and Anghel were hardly apart, hardly ever unaware of the other’s state in the clear sense of seeing the other, that they weren’t sure if it applied between them too or if it was just with the dark king. Both were awake this hour by chance, not by any nightmares the previous day, so they were both in an okay mood.

Yuuya was making breakfast (which was cereal. Neither Anghel nor Yuuya could cook anything but fish and instant ramen respectively.) while Anghel watched the show. It was the same thing that was on this channel at this time every single night. The exact same episode. Because that was the memory that happened to get picked up. Though this was an odd occasion, that they were awake by coincidence, they’d certainly both seen this timeslot plenty of times when the cause was nightmares. Their sleep schedules were entirely out of order by now, honestly; maybe it wasn’t such a weird time for them to be awake, with that in consideration.

In any case, given that it had been six years they spent living in this way, they’d both memorized basically everything that ever played. Apparently Holiday Star TV could only handle 24 hours of programming on three channels, because nothing had changed in those six years. Yuuya had more memorized than Anghel did, because he spent more time on the “more mature” channel (The channel which had live action shows besides strange preteen-aimed sitcoms) and could now recite episodes of television in a few other languages, though he couldn’t speak it. He only understood it in the context, which involved having seen it upwards of a hundred times.

In any case, Anghel knew this cartoon episode just as well, and was glad to have something else to turn his attention to when Yuuya sat down on the couch next to him with two bowls of cereal, taking one of them and thanking him for it. Aside from that, they both stayed silent. What was there to talk about anyway, when they spent their days doing nothing at all? At least, that was the assumption that could be made, and would be true perhaps of a lesser couple; not them, though. Just the same as their days on the run (which were filled to the brim with doing things) there was a comfortable silence between them many times. Just being in each other’s presence was enough.

Neither of them said a word, paying no attention to the sound still drifting from the televison, until Anghel finished eating and added his empty bowl to the growing pile of dishes on the coffee table, “We must clean our domain soon…” He noted, trailing off in his general exhaustion. It was getting to a point of being just too gross to leave this way; neither of them had been particularly neat for a long time now, but even for them this was just a bit too much.

“Indeed,” Yuuya agreed with a sigh as he stood up and moved one stack of dishes into the kitchen, dropping them unceremoniously into the sink. At least two of them broke, and he shrugged, returning to the couch and leaning against Anghel, “That’s good enough for now.”

“‘Tis,” He agreed, yawning and grabbing Yuuya’s hand, “It’s not… so horrible, just yet…” It was, but aside from when he’d put his bowl down, he found himself not caring. Caring was far too much effort, after all. He did enough of that as it was, bothering to care about the state of his surroundings was useless. Habituation was common for scents, so if the apartment smelled awful, he certainly wouldn’t know, nor did he give a damn.

It was… pathetic, wasn’t it? But to be pathetic, that was only to be expected by now. Lacking in planispheres and thus lacking in good character, the only options were to be pathetic or to be evil, because if the world had deemed them so far short of worthwhile, surely they must be. Besides, nobody could fault them for falling into such a state, knowing what had transpired six years ago. Outside of the apartment, well, it might seem that they were both doing much better. That was wrong, they were better, but not by so much.

Only time, only more time would lead them to recovery, but eventually it would. Surely, it would, it had to. Everything would one day be fine, but this was not that day. Eventually their apartment would look more like a living space and less like a dump again, eventually they would eat food worth eating and move more and do something besides watch television and sleep; eventually. For now it was impossible, though, to change. This was how they would be for a time, this was how they had been impacted. It was only natural. They both understood that, as did Hitori, so nobody would be giving them a hard time for spending their days and nights this way. It was just how they were, now. No more. No less.

Neither of them were expecting at all to recieve a knock at the door. They exchanged a glance, both confused, and both full of hesitation. Answering it… would that be a good idea? It seemed as if it wouldn’t be, but a second knock made up their minds. They both nodded, and Yuuya got up to see who was there.


	26. Chapter 26

Yuuya opened the door and saw nobody.

Then he remembered just how tall he was, and looked down only to see somebody who was much more familiar than he expected. She was dreaming, not dead, and though he wasn’t sure how he could tell, he was certain of that fact. There was always a difference, even in the case that he didn’t know the person beforehand. She was much older than the last time he’d seen her. Thirty six years older. Still, her identity was unmistakable, and he was glad his tall frame blocked the view into the apartment fairly well because this woman certainly would not approve of the state it was in.

“Salut, Mrs. Akagi!” His previous lack of luster was completely gone as he threw on his notoriously opaque happiness, and some of it may have been genuine too, given that she was not exactly a worrying person to be around, “As a dreamer, you ought to be out enjoying the sights. What brings you here?”

“The kind boy at the train station happened to recognize me. Something about having seen me in my son’s memories? In any case, he directed me here to see you. This is no ordinary dream, is it…?” She asked with a warm smile, and Yuuya shook his head.

“You have assumed the truth. This dream is one where you can speak with the dead, after all, and not merely images of us either. This star is a Holiday destination for dreamers, but also one of the genuine pseudo-afterlifes out there. Of course I mean that it is not what you would call heaven, seeing as the living cannot visit that place… but you are in luck, to find yourself in such a place, where those you know reside. And we are in luck to have you here.”

“I see. Ever the charmer even in death, aren’t you Mr. Sakazaki? Or is that perhaps Mr. Higure now?” She questioned, giving him a wink.

“Ah, how did you know?” He asked, actually a bit surprised, “There are far too many variables, I should think, for you to make such an assumption…”

“Not at all. If you spent all that time together without getting married it would be a bigger shock, and my son always was fond of that silly name he came up with, so I can’t imagine he wouldn’t get you to take it.”

“Well, you’re mostly correct, but the thing is that we aren’t exactly married; only because it was fairly impossible to come up with a marriage license while we were alive, and I’m not so sure it’s possible here. I highly doubt any of the citizens here are ordained, after all,” He shrugged, “In any case, it’s nice to see you. We weren’t expecting visitors, so perhaps it’s best if you speak with him in the hallway?”

“I’d like to talk to both of you more, actually. Or did you forget what terms you both disappeared on?” She questioned as she stepped a bit further back into the hallway, “I would like a clarification on my idea of the truth, and if I am correct, to offer my condolences.”

“Right,” Yuuya agreed, stepping out after her then calling back into the apartment, “Mon amour, there’s somebody here to see you…”

Anghel got up from the couch and made his way out to the hallway as well, miraculously looking no less disheveled than usual. Keeping up on the hygiene of their apartment was one thing, but they’d at least both been okay enough to keep up on personal hygiene. He couldn’t say he expected to see what he did when he stepped into the hallway, so he froze first, then took a deep breath, “Mother?”

“Hello, Yoshio,” She greeted him, smiling, but then sighed, “It’s been a long time.”

“Yes it has… a very long time…” He whispered, looking away and holding his arms around himself, “I’m… incredibly sorry.”

“No,” She shook her head, “Well, a goodbye might have been nice, but I’m the one who should be sorry. I knew something was wrong, and I did nothing about it. I thought that you were just going through some sort of phase, avoiding me and getting home so late at night. You said the meetings ran late and I didn’t believe you, but I turned my cheek. I guess that turned out to be correct after all, though. It really was the meetings. They just weren’t anything good,” She sighed, staring at the floor, “I’m so sorry I let that happen.”

“Mom, it wasn’t…” Anghel shook his head, now rubbing some of his hair between his fingers, “It wasn’t your fault. He was blackmailing me, even if you asked me about it I wouldn’t have told you…” He started to tremble as he talked about it, “You couldn’t have known. Nobody could have. Who thinks that something like that will happen…? I sure didn’t. I just thought…” He couldn’t continue, hiding his face in his hands, but forced out a few more words anyway, “I just thought he wanted to help me with my manga…”

Mrs. Akagi stepped forward, pulling her son into a comforting hug. She was still fairly short, but a little taller than him, even with his ridiculous platform shoes; a fact which he loathed, but only jokingly. Mostly. She just stood there for a while until he calmed down, then stepped back and crossed her arms, “Now, for business. I do need to get my story straight, after all.”

“Right,” Yuuya nodded, “What is your current impression on the situation?”

“Well… when you disappeared, I asked the school to keep an eye out for Yoshio, but I didn’t file a missing person report because I heard that you’d vanished too, Yuuya. If you were both gone without a trace, well, I couldn’t imagine you would very much want to be found. A few months later the police came asking for a picture, but given that they weren’t even using his name, I didn’t. They showed me that website, to try and get me to agree, but it only made me more certain you didn’t want them to find you. At that point I didn’t want them to find you either; after finding out what that man did, I think I would have killed him too. As for the kidnapping, it was clear that if Yoshio disappeared with you, it would certainly be of his own free will. You’re much too nice a boy, Yuuya, for me to ever believe you would kidnap somebody.”

“Well, you’ve generally got it correct. I did kill Tohri Nishikikouji, a fact which I…” Yuuya’s hand drifted to the patch over his eye subconsciously as he spoke, “Am entirely guilty of. I feel remorse, but not regret. There is a difference, you know. I know I shouldn’t have done it, and I don’t much like the burden of having committed murder, but at the same time, I don’t wish that I hadn’t done it.”

“A very understandable way to feel on the matter,” She nodded, “I wouldn’t regret it either. Those things that he did… were well worth death, several times over.”

Anghel took a step back, a bit overwhelmed. One person being so protective of him was bad enough, now there were two? It was a bit intimidating, that there were multiple people in existence who were willing to kill for him, “Mother…” He started, “I want to apologize again. I would have come back to see you, but I didn’t want to go back to that town ever again…”

“I understand,” She nodded, smiling, “I must admit it’s a bit sad, to learn this way that you’ve died… but it seems this is a good place for you. And you look every bit the handsome gentleman in that outfit, too. I hope you can both be happy.”

“You can come here too,” Anghel looked away, “If you wish, all you must do is ask the conductor to stop at Holiday Star… when the time comes,” It had been a relief, too, to learn that his mom hadn’t yet died. Then again, she always did seem like she would be a long-lived woman. Fish can be very good for you, after all!

“In that case, I think I will do just that. We have a lot of lost time to make up for, Yoshio. You best not go worrying your mother like that again, hm?” She was joking, but there was also a particular truth in her words.

“Right,” Anghel nodded, then Yuuya spoke again.

“Pardon me, I’m sorry if you find this weird, but…” Yuuya sighed, rubbing the back of his neck, “Is there any chance you know how the janitor at St Pigeonation’s is doing? Mr. One?”

“Oh, him? Well, I’m not sure if he’s doing well or if he’s doing badly, but he’s certainly still alive. Back when they put the warrant out on you he seemed to get into a bit of trouble, but I don’t know the details. You’ll have to ask him yourself, sometime. I’m sure he’s going to dream here eventually.”


	27. Chapter 27

Another night, another train.

At this point, it had become the most routine thing in history. More routine even than those incredibly specific royal guard shift changes, and yet there was still the element of randomness; or, at least, mostly. Since it had been 37 years now since Holiday Star had been formed, there had also now been 7 years of repeat trains. Finally, there were no totally new trains. There were of course, new people on those trains. People died constantly, that was just the truth of the universe, and there was a transfer stop somewhere along the line for non-planisphere holders to get onto less direct lines. Dreamers dreamed all the time. Nageki could now, however, look back into his records and discover that these trains always arrived the same time they originally did, so he now knew what to expect on any given night.

There were actually multiple trains per night, but only one ever stopped at Holiday Star; the one carrying the newly dead, generally, unless asked to stop here. The night Yuuya and Anghel arrived turned out to be a spot of miscommunication between the conductors, who would usually coordinate to avoid overwhelming the star.

Tonight was, thankfully, an early train; and since he actually knew that fact now, he’d made plans to spend time with Anghel now that he’d finally agreed again. It was funny, he thought, that they’d managed to become friends despite the vast difference in their energy levels… although, since the incident, they’d been placed on slightly more even ground in terms of that. Not that that was a good thing. Far from it, really. Despite everything that had happened and all the bouncing back they’d done, all of the dark court seemed at least somewhat changed by what had happened.

Even now that Anghel was finally willing to hang out again, the plans weren’t excessively concrete, and Nageki was already half-expecting the cancellation that he received via text just as the train was pulling into the station, so it wasn’t much of a disappointment. Besides, there was somebody dead on this train, so that was something he had to deal with, just a bit. Most people did end up in the afterlife, so wanderers getting off at this station wasn’t an incredibly common occurrence. It was… somewhat sad, he thought, that he had met so many people in life who’d end up without planispheres, given how few there seemed to be in general…

Then again, surely there were some on other trains which didn’t bother to stop here, and Holiday Star couldn’t be the only residential area along the tracks either; though perhaps it was the only one that served as both residency and a dream destination, given how surprised a certain visitor had seemed to be at its beauty… But he’d done enough thinking about that already today. It wasn’t worth his time. Rather, he took a deep breath, composed himself, then greeted the exiting passengers before squinting at one of them. The dead one. He… certainly hadn’t been here before, but there were two odd things about him. The vague familiarity, and the glow in his pocket. The unmistakable glow of a planisphere.

So he stepped forward and gingerly tapped the man’s shoulder to get his attention, given how stupendously… well, spaced-out, he seemed. Normally he did avoid touching the visitors, as he had no idea what sort of issues they could be grappling with, but capturing the attention of this man would be impossible otherwise, “Pardon me? You are dead, right…? And you have a…”

“A planisphere! Yes!” The man’s response was much more enthusiastic than Nageki expected, “True true, but I would prefer to wander than to settle into that afterlife, I should think! And what a reason to wander, I’ve seen so many things around the galaxy! This place included! It is very nice, my boy, what is it called?”

Taken aback by the casual manner in which this visitor conducted himself, Nageki took a moment to compose his thoughts before answering, “This is Holiday Star. The place I said welcome to when you were all getting off the train. Did you just decide to ignore me?”

“Oh no not at all! I’m just bad at paying attention, sorry about that! In any case, that’s my deal. I just like riding the train rather than, well, doing just about anything else!” He laughed, putting his hands on his hips, “That fine, kiddo?”

“I’m…” He paused, “Yes, it’s fine. You just… seem weirdly familiar, so I was wondering if you might let me take a quick look at your memories?” It was a gamble that this total stranger would consent to such an invasive process, but he had to try, right? Without any specific idea of what to do, he’d just take a quick shuffle through for something he recognized, but that might actually have less respect for privacy than going more in-depth to one single memory.

“Sure thing!” He agreed shockingly quickly, but Nageki wasn’t about to complain. He stepped forward and-

Pristine walls, beakers, test tubes, lab coat; so he was a scientist. Doctor Iwamine? No not quite, just slightly different

Younger

Tohri Nishikouji too? To be connected to both of those people was intimidating, but he did have a planisphere, it must have been okay. It looked as if they were all working together in a lab; strange, he didn’t take Tohri to have been the scientist type, but then, what did he know?

A house, a familiar house, but only from the outside. Nageki had never been inside, but he had seen it- that’s right, he had, in somebody else’s memory, in

He took a few steps back, reeling as he hit his limit. That was a little bit too much for him, shuffling through like that, but he was pretty sure he’d gotten the information he needed, “You… What’s your name anyway…?”

“Ryuuji Kawara.” He beamed, and Nageki just nodded with a slight smirk.

“Just as I thought…” He pointed off in the distance, “Your son lives here, sir. He runs a restaurant over that way.”

“My… son?” He questioned, wide eyed, then took off and called back as he went, “Thank you!”

He was gone, taking off in the direction he’d been pointed, and soon found the restaurant. He threw the doors open and introduced himself without even taking a look around, “I’m not here to eat, I’m here to speak to Ryouta!”

“...Hi. That’s me.” Ryouta responded, standing right there, then squinted at the strange man who had just busted into his restaurant. He was… familiar, yes, he did recognize him, but he hadn’t seen him at all since he was… only six or seven years old. It took him a moment to realize, but once he did, he froze where he stood and just stared at him wordlessly.

“Well, I’m here to see you! Well, you certainly grew up into a fine…” He looked Ryouta over, “Person! Your mother sure did a great job raising you, I’ll bet! You’ve got your own restaurant now and everything! Sure you’re… dead, but that’s not so big a deal!”

“What are you… doing here, Dad?” He managed to speak, looking over his father in a similar fashion and noting the planisphere, “Why aren’t you in the afterlife? With Mom?”

“Well, first of all, I could ask you the very same question!” He chortled, crossing his arms, “But I’ll answer, as long as when I’m done my explanation you give me one too!” He shook his head with a silly grin, but his tone seemed slightly more serious, “Your mother, she can take care of herself. Personality-wise, at least. I’m gonna go see her eventually, but for now I’m trying to find somebody we both loved, who is a little more worrying when left to his own devices. I’m certain he doesn’t have a planisphere, so he’s bound to be out in the galaxy somewhere…”

“I see…” Ryouta nodded slowly, then gave a soft smile. He and his dad had never been particularly close, given how busy he’d been in life, but then… he couldn’t deny that working too hard ran in the family, so faulting him for that would be hypocritical of him. It wasn’t Ryuuji’s fault that he’d died before he got the chance to take a vacation after all. Ryouta could kind of remember that time, too. He was going to have a few months off, when he finished his current research project… but then he got sick and died. Ryouta wasn’t allowed to go to the funeral, young as he was. In any case, that was the past, “Well, when you find this person, what would you do? You can’t exactly bring him with you if he doesn’t have a planisphere, so are you going to have to choose between him and Mom? I couldn’t even imagine doing something like that… so why don’t you take my planisphere and give it to him, when you find him?”

“Oh no no, I couldn’t possibly do that…” He shook his head, raising a hand in front of himself, “If you give a planisphere to somebody undeserving of it, it disappears. I saw it happen on the train. Somebody who’d committed a murder-suicide… the murdered tried to give their planisphere away to their killer, and it disappeared entirely. Oh, but that’s so morbid, let’s not think about that!”

“Morbidity is kind of irrelevant now. I mean. We’re already dead.”

“In any case, I suppose I don’t know what I’ll do. Maybe I’ll try and bust your mother out of the afterlife! I can’t imagine being with only one and not the other, though I don’t expect you to understand that… but I can at least hope you don’t think your old man’s weird for it, right?”

Ryouta couldn’t help but laugh, leaving his father confused before he answered, “I absolutely can understand. I, uh… well I have to say I’m actually in a similar situation, except that I’m already with both of the people I love. They’re both here.”

“Well!” Ryuuji was very loud, “Would you look at that! Like father, like son! Isn’t that a funny coincidence! In any case, though, you never told me why you were here and not in the afterlife. Is it because of them?”

“No, I can’t say it is. They both have planispheres, after all…” Ryouta pondered, “I guess it’s just that I feel this is the place I need to be. This is where I belong in the universe, and well, I like it. Maybe it isn’t the safest place in the world, what with all the criminals, but there haven’t been any problems at all for a few years! I think one of the kings did something to up the security after that big incident… but in any case, I really enjoy it here. Maybe it would be nicer in the actual afterlife, but I don’t much like change, so I’d prefer to stay here.”

“Ah, so that’s the big difference between you and I,” Ryuuji nodded, “You’d prefer to stick around in one place for a while, but I can hardly so much as stand still for a few seconds. I always need to be moving around! I guess you’re more mature than me after all, being able to settle down and all that.”


	28. The Wandering Storybook

Once, there was a wanderer;

And just as his name would suggest, he was always wandering.

He never knew where he was going, all his life

All he ever knew was who he was going to see.

He would never say he was going to his house, he would say he was going to see his wife.

He would never say he was going to work, he would say he was going to see his coworkers.

He didn’t say he was dying.

He said he was going to see the stars.

But one day, that changed. One day long after he had died, and was wandering through eternity.  
Who was he going to see?

He wasn’t so sure anymore.

He had a destination for once in his existence, he did.

It wasn’t that he needed to go to see his wife, or his coworker, or the stars.

He needed to go home.

Where was home?

What was home?

Who?

Who was home?


	29. Chapter 29

“Hey you,” Somebody said from a few feet away, stopping Yuuya on the road. He’d been taking a walk just to clear his head, and to take a break from cleaning the apartment. He and Anghel had both just barely crossed the threshold into feeling okay enough to care about the state of their living space. The visit from the latter’s mother a few months back had certainly helped with that. This voice that stopped him was similarly familiar, a sound from that long-past time, “Mind me asking how you managed to get that nasty eyepatch?”

Yuuya only stopped walking and turned to see who had said it, though that voice was… unmistakable, really. It wasn’t difficult for him to act as if it wasn’t a big deal, but the genuity of his smile most likely gave away just how relieved and ecstatic he was to see the man who was before him, now much older, but still looking just as rugged and friendly as ever, “Well you see, One, that’s a very long story,” He had hardly even greeted One when he burst out laughing and crossed his arms.

“Well clearly! Eyepatches always come with long stories,” He chuckled, but then his face grew serious, “And you’re going to tell me about it, or at least answer some of my other questions. You left on a sour note back then, Sakazaki,” He then took a closer look, “But you don’t look much different than you did when you left, which only makes the patch extra mysterious. At least I can jump to conclusions on what else happened, but that’s just baffling me.”

“Well… I got this eyepatch after I died, to be completely honest. All of my scars, actually. I got through thirty years on the run from the law generally unscathed, and my death was pretty much instantaneous too… but I couldn’t hide from pain forever,” He shook his head, “You saw what… he did. The way he was. You know what I did to him for it. And, turns out, he didn’t take too kindly to being shot in the head. So he shot me in the eye. And the arm, and the gut. And everywhere else.”

“Well…” Leone rubbed his temple, “That’s unfortunate. I’m sorry that happened.”

“Thanks, now,” He sighed, “I have to thank you. The warrant for my arrest didn’t go out for several months, despite the fact that you clearly knew I went against my orders not to kill.”

“Well, I saw the way you were,” One shrugged, “I would have stopped you if you hadn’t left to go kill him so quickly, but you weren’t exactly… in your right mind. If you were able to cover it up I wasn’t about to go snitching on you, though I did get in some trouble when the warrant went out on you. I told them that I knew nothing about it, and really I can’t say I was lying. You said you were going to kill him, sure, but that could have just as easily have been a product of your anger and not a serious threat…”

“But it was,” Yuuya sighed again, “And you’re disappointed in me for it. I know.”

“I wouldn’t quite say disappointed is the right word to use. I was shocked, actually. Never thought you’d have that sort of temper, or that you’d act on it. But then again, I can’t say I ever expected much emotion of any type outta you,” He rubbed his chin, “Probably should have expected something like that would happen eventually. People as easygoing as I thought you were, just don’t exist. You were a fine agent, though. Would’ve stayed one if not for your interpersonal relationships probably. Not that I’m saying you shouldn’t have had them, not at all. Only that you were an exceptionally good agent until that came into play, but that’s better than an agent who stays steadily mediocre regardless of other factors.”

“I can’t say I expected any of that from myself either, One,” He looked up at the sky, shoving his hands onto his pockets, “There’s a lot of things I didn’t expect. I didn’t expect to fall in love. Didn’t expect to hate somebody as much as I ended up doing. Didn’t expect to throw my life down the drain, didn’t expect him to stay with me through it all. Still a lot of things. Dying didn’t really change anything. I didn’t expect to see my brother here, didn’t expect him to hate me so much. I didn’t expect to see my worst enemy again. I didn’t expect to ever see you again, either, but I’m glad for it.”

“You didn’t? I thought you would have been here for long enough to see other dreaming visitors. Of course I’d end up here sooner or later.”

“Not necessarily. I never had a dream here when I was alive. Not even once. I’m not sure how I even knew to come here after I died, actually!” He held his hand up carelessly, but his mood was certainly not the greatest, words betraying his face, “But that’s not important, I mean. You’re here now, and if you would rather come here than go to the afterlife when you die, you know what to ask for.”

“Well, this place is pretty nice, I gotta say. And you seem like you still need somebody to look out for you, so…” One ran a hand through his hair, “Guess I’ll do that. No real reason not to, anyway. It’s not like there’d be anybody waiting for me in this main afterlife you mentioned.”

“Well, it’s still your decision. As much as I would like to have my mentor back, I’m not about to tell you what you should do.”

“No worries, Yuuya. I’d be glad to mentor you again. I think you still kind of need it.”


	30. Chapter 30

“Nageki Fujishiro, I request, no, I demand an auidence with The King,” Somebody stated while stepping off the train, taking Nageki by surprise. He took a closer look at the woman to see if she was somebody who’d been here before, but she definitely wasn’t. No, the last time Nageki had seen her was when he was alive; so how could she possibly know anything about Holiday Star already? Not that he was particularly surprised that she, of all people, would, but for anyone to know of the monarchy moments after arrival…

“Hoppe?” He questioned, confusion showing through, not even able to go on to his other wonders. He wasn’t shocked that she was here, though. It had now been almost a century since he’d died. Azami, Rabu, and One had all passed on and come to live here. The only people any of the members of the courts had known in life that could possibly still be living would be those who had been children around the time Hiyoko had died. Well, particularly, one child. There were no more living acquaintances, morbid as that was, but eternity was bound to lead to that sooner rather than later. However, Nageki couldn’t say he expected Hoppe, of all the other orphans, to be the one who came demanding to talk to a monarch. She didn’t… sound so demanding, though.

“Yeah, that’s my name. The one and only. Actually, now that I think about it, Hitori’s not the only person I need to talk to… I gotta give you a piece of my mind too, Nageki!” She turned to him and crossed her arms.

“Well, generally I would tell you not to do that, but Hitori is asleep, and clearly Momo and Kanta aren’t here, so I don’t have any sort of diversion for you this time.... go ahead and rip me a new one, I guess,” He rolled his eyes, leaning back against the wall of the station.

“Oh, no, not like that, Nageki,” She shook her head, “I’m not going to yell at you! I am mad though. Really mad. Why didn’t you take better care of yourself??” She frowned, “I know that Hitori definitely wouldn’t have let you die like that if he knew you were sick! And if you really didn’t want him to know, you should have at least gotten enough sleep, drank enough water, done SOMETHING that I know for a fact you did not do,” Somewhere in her rambling her eyes had started watering; after meeting Kazuaki, Nageki had sort of forgotten just how quick his ‘little sister’ was to cry. It wasn’t half as bad, honestly.

“How do you… know these things…” Nageki finally asked, raising a finger in the air.

“Well I know you didn’t take good care of yourself because I know you. Well, knew you. It’s been a really long time… sorry we didn’t keep in touch with you and Hitori after you moved out,” She shrugged, shaking her head, “Speaking of Hitori, though, I knew he was a king here because I took an interest in foreign affairs. Surprise, Nageki, I grew up to be smart!”

“Foreign affairs…? You mean?” He asked, squinting.

“Mmhmm! One of the other residential areas of the galaxy has existed long enough to have intel on the other ones. It sure was a pain to get info on this place, though! There’s not very much of it at all, so it’s tough to find out that Holiday Star even exists! The researchers hadn’t got anything new on it for… well I gotta say, maybe sixty years now?”

“Hmm… Well, Holiday Star has existed for… Ninety-three years now. Sixty-two years ago was when Hitori did… something, to up the security. I’m not sure what he did though, I didn’t notice any differences,” He shrugged, “Well actually, after that using my abilities was a little more tiring, but my job in general was easier…”

“Oh, okay!” Hoppe said, “In that case, it’s probably a link between a mind-reading ability and the station, preventing people from getting off if they have bad intentions! Though somebody who knows more about abilities could explain it a lot better than me…” She trailed off, kicking the ground.

“But… bad intentions…?” He was still trying to make sense of what she said.

“Well I called them researchers, but the more technical term for them would be… spies. I only even knew about Hitori being a king here because that’s the information they’re after. Not like, geography or anything,” She chuckled nervously, “But clearly since I was allowed off the train, I play no part in that!”

“Why would anybody be spying on us…?” Nageki was still utterly baffled.

“Because you’re a neighboring territory with a functioning government? The galaxy isn’t all made up of towns, you’re not even the only monarchy out here. Actually, there are very few non-monarchies… In any case, you’ll figure it out eventually! A few more centuries and the Galactic Administration is bound to pop by. Now is that king of yours awake yet? I have many words for him,” She said resolutely, “Many. Words.”

“Well, you can go to the palace and find out. I just don’t know, actually. He could be awake by now, he just usually… isn’t.”

“Huh, well, I used to be pretty good at waking Hitori up… I won’t get executed if I do, right?”

“Executed?” Nageki looked at her, eyes wide in shock, “Of course not. Nobody gets executed here. Exile is the most severe punishment. Well, in one case, mild torture and exile, but that was a very special case, and I didn’t take part in it.”

“Hitori did?”

“Yeah he- how did you know that?”

“Because I knew Hitori too,” She shrugged, smiling, “It was nice to see you, Nageki, but I really should be getting to my audience with The King!” And with that, she ran off, leaving Nageki in the dust. A lot of people ran away from him, actually, to go do things on Holiday Star. He was used to it now. He hoped that he’d get to catch up with Hoppe a bit better later on, though. Maybe find out what happened to the others too.

Clearly, though, her current mission was to talk to Hitori. She ran up to the palace and crashed through the doors, starting to cry as she did so because, well, crashing through doors hurt. And she ran immediately into Kazuaki, who she had never before met, who also started crying but with more severity and wailed at her, “W-What’s going on?? Why are you here?? Why are you crying?”

She blinked at him, wiped her eyes, then sighed, “I’m here to speak to The King. The other one. The one that’s not you. Hitori Uzune.”

“O-Oh…” Kazuaki sniffed, nodded, then pointed to a door, “He’s in there…” Hoppe noted what he said and took off, this time actually taking her time with the door. She saw Hitori was sitting and reading a book; he sometimes did that, she remembered, just so he could come up with recommendations for Nageki. She couldn’t imagine his reason had changed.

“Well, well. Hitori Uzune,” She spoke to announce her presence, and though he looked up with a blankly curious expression, it immediately dropped into some sort of dread.

“H-Hoppe…” He responded nervously, getting up from his chair then practically hiding behind it.

“Cut that out, Hitori! You’re not that big a coward…” She sighed, approaching him cautiously, “You’re not seriously scared of your little sister, are you?? You were always trying to protect me back when we lived in Heartful House,” She pouted, “You can’t do that if you’re scared!”

“You’re… still the same old Hoppe…” He responded shakily, straightening up a bit.

“Hmm, I wouldn’t say that. Just like I wouldn’t say you’re the same old Hitori. But, that’s a whole different personality area,” She said dismissively, “Now, I’m not going to let you hide from me this time. I tried to visit you in prison so many times, Hitori, you owe me this, almost a century later…”

“It’s been a century since we talked. Why didn’t you call, or visit, or write? Why come to see me only after…” He trailed off, looking away.

“Well, about that, uh…” She answered with just as much of an unsure quality, “I couldn’t. We couldn’t, we went to try and visit you in prison when we found out because then we knew where you were. See, Kanta sort of… burnt… the info you gave us. Just a little. Accidentally. It was pretty rude anyway, though!”

“How did he…” 

“He put it in the oven for safekeeping, since we never used the oven. Then he used the oven,” She sighed, rolling her eyes, “Why wouldn’t you talk to any of us?”

“Because you were disappointed in me,” He frowned, seeming to shrink a bit as he slouched, “And I didn’t want to deal with that.”

“Disappointed…?” She asked, “Well I can’t speak for the others but I was more disappointed in the fact you wouldn’t talk to me than the fact Nageki died and you killed somebody. I mean sure it was upsetting to hear, but I can’t say it was totally unexpected.”

“You… expected that I might kill somebody?”

“No. I expected that you might get caught. Or, well, as it happened, you turned yourself in,” She chuckled a bit, giving him a knowing look, “Come on, Hitori. Even I knew that tutoring jobs don’t pay that much.”

“What are you talking about, Hoppe?” He questioned, maybe a bit more hostile than he intended, “That job, I didn’t kill anybody when I was working for them, I just hid the bodies, that’s all I did…”

“So tell me, then. What were the names of any of your employers?” She asked, picking an apple up from a nearby basket and biting into it, only to immediately spit out her bite, “...Could’ve warned me this was plastic.”

“Why are you doing this?” He asked, “Why are you trying to convince me I did something so horrible? No. I only ever killed two people. Nageki and Kazuaki. It was my fault they died, but nobody else.”

“Oh, come on. Nageki was sick and stubborn, nothing you could do about it. I just thought, Hitori, that since you always got so mad when any of us lied…” 

“That’s right. Lying is not a good thing to do. It only leads to sorrow.”

“In any case, I guess I’ll leave you alone. I didn’t really come here just to tell you off. I just wanted to see you… and Nageki, again. It’s pretty lonely where I live.”

“What about the others?”

“Pyonpyon works for the administration, but he sometimes comes to see me on my days off,” She shook her head, tearing up as she stared down at the floor, “Momo, Kanta, Tsukkun and Nacchin… well, I don’t think they’d really like me anymore, even if they were able to visit…”

“Hoppe…” Hitori started, voice ringing with his dawning realization, “You don’t have a planisphere… right?”

“Mhm,” She nodded a bit, clasping her hands close to her chest, “You and me both, Hitori… I guess that we’re both, just, bad people.”

“Well, you know what I did, but what did you do?” He asked, concerned, “Are you okay?”

“Is anybody without a planisphere okay, Hitori? No. I’m not, you certainly aren’t, and I can’t imagine your court is either. If you have one now. My info is… outdated, thanks to your security measures,” She shrugged again, then sighed again, “I was only doing what I could to protect the others… no, not protect. That’s a lie. I was only doing what I could to… avenge them. But, you know, wrath is a sin. Vengeance solves nothing. Nice to know the universe judges the quality of a soul by cliched morals…” She laughed a bit bitterly, tears falling on the floor, “It… it’s not like anybody I hurt got a planisphere either…”

“Hoppe…” Any of Hitori’s reservations melted away. She was now, just as before, his adoptive younger sister, one of the people in the world who he most needed to protect. Not somebody he feared judgment from, but a child who needed his help. She wasn’t even a child anymore, but that was how he saw her nonetheless, “You’re lonely where you are right now… aren’t you?”

“Yeah…” She sniffed, nodding, “Except when Pyonpyon comes to visit, I don’t exactly have any friends.”

“So why don’t you come to live here on Holiday Star?”


	31. The Heartful Storybook

Once upon a time, there was a small penguin.   
She was a very emotional penguin, always getting excited or crying about something or other.

And she knew of somebody very, very noble.

Somebody who had always done his best to protect those he held dear.  
Somebody who had always looked out for her, and everyone else around him.  
The very model… of a perfect person.

She wanted to be like him.

The penguin had a few friends who she loved very much. A kiwi, a pigeon, and a very pretty gray bird. They were some of the only people in the world that she loved.

One day, the kiwi got in an electrical accident at work. And that was one down, and the penguin was very sad.

Poor Kiwi, poor kiwi.

So the penguin found the person responsible for the accident and she made him pay.

One down, one down.

The pretty gray bird eventually met somebody who was very mean.

She said that he cared about her, but she was wrong. Proved wrong.

Proved wrong by the chalk lines on the ground after he stabbed her in the back, and that was two down.

Poor bird, poor bird.

So the penguin took the knife the mean man had used, and she made him pay too.

Two down, two down.

The pigeon was the only one left, and he promised the penguin that he would always be there. He promised, he promised…

But then he got married, and was found murdered the next morning.

He’d thought with all the rotten luck his friends had, something like this might happen, so he drafted a will and left everything to the penguin. Just in case. Three down.

Poor kiwi, poor kiwi.

His widow, bitter over her lost inheritance, went to find the penguin.

But the penguin was waiting for her.

Three down, three down.

Zero to go?

No, one to go.

The penguin was still there.

And she had failed, failed to protect what meant the most to her…

Because she had tried to be like the person she once knew.

And he had also failed.

Now they were both absolutely rotten.

Poor penguin, poor penguin.

And she died all alone.

Four down, four down.

Zero to go.

Poor orphans, poor orphans.


	32. Chapter 32

“No, no, I couldn’t!” Hoppe shook her head quickly as she took a step backwards, “I’m living on a documented star, so I’d have to file change of residence papers to the administration, thus calling the attention of the administration here and probably requiring you to get Holiday Star officially registered…”

“Well, why shouldn’t it be registered?” He asked with a shrug, “It doesn’t seem like a very bad idea. Go ahead and tell me about how it’s the worst idea now.”

“It’s not the worst idea out there, but the registration process is… not nice. Cause of some problems, any star that gets on the radar enough for mandatory registration has a handful of citizens checked to make sure they maintain free will and individuality,” She explained, “And… they might put you on trial, too. Having someone in charge who doesn’t have a planisphere has never ended well in their history so they’re really wary.”

“Well I can’t imagine it’ll end great in this case either, so I don’t blame them.”

“Hitori, I’m ninety… er… sixty percent certain that your repentant attitude proves otherwise. The very fact that you said that is probably a point in your favor. Not like I know anything about how this actually works. I’m trash too.”

“A lack of a planisphere does not make you trash. The members of my court are good men, from my morally objective point of view. I believe them to be good people despite their mistakes, and I believe the same of you, Hoppe,” He shook his head, “I may not know what you did, but I just can’t believe that you would really do anything horrible.”

“I killed the people responsible for the deaths of Pyonpyon, Momo, and Kanta,” She admitted, biting down on her lip and looking down at the ground.

“So I was right. Nothing so terrible at all,” He smirked a bit, then closed his eyes, “Though I must say, of all of you, I’d think Kanta of anybody would be more likely to do something like that… So was he the first to die?”

“No. He was the second last, if we include me,” She frowned, “He was always a hard worker like you, Hitori, but he wasn’t so protective. So I stepped up to the plate, and I failed. You thought I would be disappointed in you? No, it’s more likely that you’d be disappointed in me.”

“Hoppe,” He shook his head, walking over to her and hugging her, “No, no, you didn’t fail. Partial success, that’s what it’s called. You did your best, and you avenged their deaths. That’s no failure at all,” He stood back up again, having needed to lean down a bit to hug her, “I’m the failure here.”

“I don’t think you are, Hitori!”

“No, no, I am. My dear fellow monarch would beg to differ, but I may be the only person here who really and truly deserves my lack of a planisphere. I didn’t just fail, Hoppe. I failed spectacularly. Nageki died right under my nose. I killed Kazuaki. The people I left behind… suffered a death at the hands of foul play. You didn’t get a planisphere. Sixty-two years ago, I slept through the biggest crisis Holiday Star would ever face. And now, I’m going to let you go back to being alone? No,” He shook his head, clenching his fists, “I really ought to go on trial for my sins. For,” He glanced at her, looking weary, “All of them. Even the ones I can’t remember.”

“So you admit it now? Though I guess you did block it from your memory, but you had to have known, Hitori…” She trailed off, “I don’t blame you for wanting to forget, though. I’d want to forget that sort of thing too. I…” Her breath caught in her throat, and she buried her face in her hands, “Hitori, sometimes I can still feel the knife in my hands. Sometimes I can still feel the little shock I got when I sabotaged that equipment. I can still see that awful woman’s face as I…” She couldn’t continue now, trembling and clearly crying behind her hands.

“Hey, it’s okay…” He tried to comfort her, but was reeling himself as certain memories from the past threatened to resurface. The trauma of killing was a heavy one, but he’d buried it. Most of it. Not from that night, he wouldn’t allow himself to lose hold of the facts about that night, but before… Before…

Hitori said that he never lied.

That was his motto.

He would leave things out, stretch the truth, but never lie.

Or so he thought, but…

How could he avoid lying if he didn’t even know the truth himself?

\--------------------------------

"Hoppe…” Nageki groaned, leaning back against a nearby building. He’d met back up with her in the residential area to help her pick a place to live once she moved here, but had realized immediately upon seeing Hitori (who left again in moments) what must have happened, “Why would you… why would you ever bring that up to him?”

“Honestly, I was more shocked that you hadn’t. It’s been a century, Nageki,” She frowned and looked away, crossing her arms, “Or at least, a century since it happened. A little less since I figured it out, I think.”

“He was very good at lying, back then,” Nageki said softly, sighing, “Nobody but us could ever possibly find out. We only figured it out after the fact because we knew Hitori well enough, and we knew his tutoring job didn’t pay nearly enough for him to support us as much as he did… But he repressed the memory for a reason, Hoppe. He didn’t want to remember that. He’d rather come up with excuses to explain away the skills he got from it than actually stop to think about why he was able to do things like… hide bodies,” He frowned, “When he told Kazuaki that tall tale, when he let me view the memory, it was the first convincing lie I’d heard from him since we left the orphanage.”

“Memory viewing… so you could show him what he forgot, right…?” She asked, and Nageki grimaced.

“I told you already. Remembering that would be really bad for him. Just look at how much you upset him just by implying that he was making up the story about that job. He doesn’t want to know what he did.”

“But I want to know what he did! Nageki, aren’t you curious about exactly what he did? All we know is that he definitely killed at least one person. Doesn’t that make you wonder?”

“Honestly, Hoppe? It doesn’t. I don’t care what he did back then. I’m not the least bit curious, because it has to have been something really bad. Hitori’s not the sort of person to hide from himself unless he seriously has to. He’s already guilty enough over the things he does remember. As he well should be, but he doesn’t need anything else. That’s old news, it should be just as dead and buried as all of us,” He shook his head, “If you really need to know, find some way to talk to Kanta. He was closest to Hitori’s age at the time. Leave my brother alone.”

“He’s my brother too, Nageki…” She pouted, starting to tear up.

“To say something like that to him, it’s crossing a line. Guilt-tripping him over his wrongdoings is one thing, this is… Hoppe, you do realize, if he remembers…” He let out a heavy breath, shaking his head and searching for words, “He’s not going to be okay.”

“You’re exaggerating, Nageki. Maybe it will freak him out, but I… don’t think he can hate himself anymore than he already does,” She seemed sorry, though, “And there’s no changing it now. He’s… going to have to remember. The administration will put him on trial sooner or later. Maybe soon, maybe not, but he’s prepared for it now… at least, he says so.”

Nageki stared at her, blinked a few times, then found his voice was scratching when he spoke again, “You mean it’s… inevitable?”

“Yeah. All stars get registered someday.”

“I guess there’s really no use delaying the end, then. Let’s… get it over with…”

And for once in all the time he’d existed, Nageki Fujishiro felt a particular emotion. He’d come close to it before, during the incident 62 years ago, but this was more profound than that. In this case, he knew all of the details, and he knew what the potential outcome could be. This was something beyond what most people would ever feel.

Pure, undiluted, dread.


	33. Chapter 33

The representative from the galactic administration arrived two weeks later; he didn’t exactly look the part of somebody sent by the force which keeps the entire universe in order, but rather just… a nondescript businessman. He himself was absolutely unimportant, but the reason for his presence had been a constant source of worry for Nageki. Nageki, and nobody else, because nobody else knew. Kazuaki was only glad that his star was going to become official. Hitori was focusing on the fact that Hoppe would soon be moving there, and not on the fact that he’d be put on trial. Stay positive. Ha.

When the administrator arrived, Hitori had to break the link in order to allow him off of the train. Bad intentions, bad intentions… the intention of dethroning Hitori was buried somewhere in that bureaucracy. He supposed that was bad enough to trip the barrier, but he fixed the problem. Let the representative onto Holiday Star. He considered that it might turn out okay, but if he did, he was lying to himself. There was no positive outcome of this situation, but he could certainly do his best to leave Holiday Star a better place for everyone else.

He knew he would be put on trial during the course of this registration process, that much was absolutely certain. He wasn’t expecting, however, what came to light as the “free will” determination process. Apparently, there had been some issues in the past of stars where the visitors or residents had been… assimilated, into one single being. The very thought of it was gross, but apparently it warranted this security measure towards any star that got big enough, or involved enough in foreign affairs, to be investigated by the universe.

Apparently, to prove that they still had ahold of themselves, the members of both courts would have to remember their own deaths. Dying was the memory which faded the least naturally, so of course it was the perfect memory to test for individuality. Of course, Hitori made the mistake of mentioning that some people might not want to talk about their own deaths, and found himself suddenly standing in a strange building that didn’t really resemble anything in particular at all. It was… something completely unfamiliar to him, but as he looked around he noticed that all the members of both courts were already there, nearby, as well as… a bird, and the representative.

A bird? Upon closer examination, the bird seemed to be wearing some sort of purple robes, and it dawned on Hitori what must have been going on, and yet he was still confused. Why was this bird here? And… what did he DO? That was a question that would never be answered, because he flew out of the building before anything even began. Hitori watched in confusion, then was a few minutes later just about prepared for whatever was to come when the representative stepped forward and grabbed Nageki’s arm, pulling him over rather roughly to a podium.

“Hey! What are you doing??” Hitori asked harshly, but when going to rush forward found that his feet wouldn’t budge from the floor, and he grimaced.

“Oh, just thought you should know, we’ve taken precautions within this projection to make sure that you don’t… try anything,” The administrator explained his predicament, “And what I’m doing is using your memory viewer. Within this projection his powers are amplified enough to project the deaths of those who are… less willing, to come forward with their cause of death. And since he’s been trained in mind reading too, it can be a completely automated process!”

“What the… what are you talking about?” Hitori asked, screwing up his face in a sort of confused anger.

“Unhand Nageki!” Kazuaki protested as well, having already burst into tears, “You are here to register us! Not harrass us…”

“Registration is only a process to determine that stars are not a danger to those in the galaxy. I am under no obligation to show you any kindness,” As he said this, Nageki stopped pulling against his grip and seemed to go into some sort of chance, “I’m here to do my job, then leave. The presence of a memory viewer makes my job much easier. And there he goes, he’s gone into viewing mode. So, let’s see who’s first.”

\-----------------  
This… couldn’t be happening. He had to deny it, but he knew it was true. Horribly, sinkingly true. It wasn’t his fault. No, it was. Of course it was. It had to be. He was the one who messed up, after all. It was wrong of him to believe that, for that man, a taste of his own medicine at Hiyoko’s hands would be enough for him to lay off for good-

Medicine, medicine. He didn’t want to think about medicine right now. Medicine, that was the problem, wasn’t it? He’d done so well, so well, he’d been okay. Been fine. But he hadn’t gotten hurt, either. It was easy enough to go cold turkey like that. Easy enough to forget about it when the only thing that drew him to it was the desire and not a necessity; no, it was never a necessity. He convinced himself it was. He didn’t want to be in pain. He wasn’t in any pain.

But he had certainly ruined everything.

He had to pick up the phone, though. Had to talk to them. Let them know. That was what he was supposed to do when he messed up, anyway.

RY: Sakuya? Hiyoko?  
HI: Yeah hey! What’s going on?  
RY: Is Sakuya here too  
SA: Oh no.  
RY: Oh no?  
SA: You seem serious. Something is the matter.  
RY: Right  
HI: Oh no, Ryouta! What’s going on? Are you ok?  
RY: Not really  
RY: See I kind of sort of  
RY: Well  
RY: Relapsed  
HI: shit  
SA: Relapsed as in you…  
SA: Took those painkillers again.  
RY: Yeah that’s exactly what happened  
SA: Ryouta, are you all right?  
HI: That’s really dangerous!  
HI: I’m freaking out…  
SA: I would not use that phrase but I am similarly concerned.  
HI: Do you want us to come over??  
RY: No  
RY: That would be pointless  
SA: It’s unlike you to say things are pointless…  
RY: There’s not anything you can do actually  
RY: I uh  
RY: I took too many of them

RY: Are you still there  
HY: we both dropped our phones on the ground  
SA: Is this some sort of joke?  
RY: I wish it was  
RY: Sorry  
RY: Good luck  
RY: I love you  
HI: RYOUTA

“Hello. Ryouta Kawara, is it? Nice boy. Untimely death, but better that than to go out the same way as the other Kawaras, right? Unfortunate either way. Now, let me take a peek at your ticket and we’ll get you right on your way to the afterlife.”

“No… can I… I feel like I need to go to… Holiday Star.”


	34. The Hardworking Storybook

Once upon a time, there was a bee.

A tough little worker bee.

The bee had a lot of people that he cared a lot about, and they were often sad.

So the bee worked very hard to cheer them up, and sometimes it worked.  
They were happy.  
So the bee was happy.

In fact, the bee actually liked to work!   
So it was good for everybody.

One day, though, the person who the bee helped most… died.

And that person was replaced by a mean, mean wasp.

The wasp said a lot of bad things to the bee.

It told the hardworking bee that it was lazy.  
It told the purehearted bee that it was disgusting.  
It told the bee who had helped his mother so very much, that her death was its fault.

And the wasp hurt the bee in other ways too.  
And the bee wasn’t sure which was worse.

But the bee couldn’t do anything to keep the words from hurting.  
So he did what he could to stop the tangible pain.  
The bee who had been working hard his entire life,

Finally slowed down a little bit.  
But slowing down is bad for bees,  
Because if their wings don’t go fast enough,  
They will fall.

The bee was almost okay.   
The bee was trying his best.  
But one day the bee slowed down too much.  
And would never be heard from again.

For all the people who cared about him,  
Nobody out there cared for him;  
Took care of him, that is.

The bee knew it wasn’t their fault though.  
He tried to solve all his problems alone.  
If he let them in,  
It would have been okay…

Poor bee, poor bee.


	35. Chapter 35

“I’m sorry to tell you this, but Ms Tosaka…” The doctor spoke slowly, trying to find the right words to not set her off. This appointment had already been hectic enough with her level of enthusiasm which went beyond that of most thirty-year-olds, and he certainly didn’t want to see her anxious, but, “You have very small bone structure. Carrying this child to term could have serious complications.”

“...Complications?” Much to the doctor’s surprise, the person to respond first was actually the man who had accompanied this patient in and had hardly said a word throughout the entirety of the appointment, “What sort of complications?”

“Many,” He explained, watching both faces drop further, “There’s a chance that neither you nor the baby would survive birth, Hiyoko. With that in mind, it might be best if you were to look elsewhere to grow your family. You’re only two months along, so it isn’t too late to change your mind…”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Hiyoko said softly, crossing her arms, “I want to have this child.”

“But-”

“No! I’m having this baby!” Hiyoko insisted, looking to Sakuya for backup with a frown on her face, “I’m a tough girl, so I’m sure I’ll be okay!”

“Hiyoko, I’m not sure if…” Sakuya looked concerned, “I know you are strong, and stronger still in your convictions… But…” He looked away, “I would hate to lose you too,” Ryouta’s death had been a decade ago, but the night of it still haunted his thoughts. To be so helpless to do anything about it, to just read the texts he sent, standing there in fear when he ceased to answer…

Hiyoko realized, too, just what his thought process was, and she visibly wavered in her resolve. That was right, wasn’t it? Maybe she could disregard the consequences, but she wasn’t so sure she could do that to Sakuya. After all, if worst came to worst, then this could leave him completely alone… “We’ll have to… talk about it. Will it work to get back to you within a week, Doctor?”

“A week works for me. So does two weeks, so you can take your time if you need to. Three weeks might be pushing it though, so don’t take too much time.”

She nodded, and they finished up the appointment with as little conversation as possible. Only what needed to be said. No more, and no less. It wasn’t until out on the sidewalks that Hiyoko turned to Sakuya and sighed, “I’m… not sure what to do, now…”

“Neither am I. It would be truly wonderful to raise a child with you, Hiyoko, but to be put at risk of losing both you and the baby…” He trailed off, turning away and crossing his arms, “It is too great a gamble. Were you and the child both to die, I would be entirely alone. The chance of happiness is certainly not worth that risk of failure. We can adopt, it will be safer.”

“But then we’d have to wait five more years, Sakuya! They don’t let people under thirty-five years old adopt. At least, as far as I know,” She frowned, “But you’re right about the danger…”

“So we can wait those five years. It’s a small price to pay for keeping you alive, Hiyoko. I’ve had quite enough of loss,” He explained, then checked his watch, already being in slightly hot water for taking a portion of the day off to come to this appointment, “I should be getting to work, but we’ll talk more on this matter when I get home.”

“Okay,” She nodded, then leaned up a bit to kiss him before turning to walk home, “See you this evening. Don’t worry about it too much, we’ll get this sorted out!”

He nodded as he got into his car, though he couldn’t take a thing she said with a grain of salt. He was bound to worry about it quite a bit, and she wouldn’t be seeing him that evening. Not that either of them could have possibly predicted that latter fact.


	36. The Lustrous Storybook

Once upon a time there was a pearl.

He was a dazzling, wonderful, perfect pearl; and though all the other pearls were polished the same as him, he was the best of them all.

Everyone told him so.  
Of course he believed them.

He was taught all sorts of things about being a pearl.

Do not smile.  
Do not cry.  
Do not make a show of your emotions.

The one who taught the pearl these things was a master in them himself.  
A man who would do such things as,  
prove his heart true through murder  
rather than  
speak of it.

And maybe the pearl would have grown up to be like that too.

The pearl was always trying to impress its teacher.  
No-

Not impress. He was impressed enough, because of how glorious this pearl was.

Rather, the pearl was always trying not to make his teacher upset with him.

So the pearl stopped doing things that it loved to do.

The teacher said enough.

Pearl, you are good enough at piano.  
Pearl, you are good enough at fencing.  
Pearl  
Time to learn something new. Stay cultured.  
Be just good enough in high class skills.

So he did stop. He did as he was told.

And he was not happy,

But at least he was the best.

And being the best, was second-best to being happy.  
So just like him,  
It was good enough.

But the pearl could not go on that way forever,  
And he became… became a foolish pearl.

He had always been the best,  
But there was always another to take his place should he falter.  
Should he stop shining so bright.  
Should he stop being  
Good enough.

But the pearl could not so easily give up on the people he loved as he did the things he loved.

The pearl found himself cherishing a bee and a beast, but such things, they’re not good for pearls.  
They can make them lose their luster.  
And among shiny pearls there are no secrets.

So the one who had taught the pearl to hide his emotions did just that.  
He didn’t show his anger.  
Only expressed it in action.

To him, that pearl who had always been the best of them all… was now no longer worthy of being a pearl at all.  
Only the oyster’s shell.

And the pearl thought maybe that was correct.  
Because he kicked and shouted and gave up a piece of his mind.

But he would rather be an oyster shell with the beast and the bee than a pearl all alone.

But then, maybe that wasn’t the right thing to do in the end.

Because he lost one of the people he loved.

And emotion clouded him over,  
He was filled up with worry  
when the other was in danger  
and his shine faded.

He was distracted by his doubt.  
And he was the first of two incidents,  
Which would lead to the replacement  
Of a bridge.

Poor pearl, poor pearl.


	37. Chapter 37

“Azami… I’ve got something important to ask you,” Hiyoko started softly as soon as her friend picked up the phone. It had been three months now, since Sakuya had died. Three months since she had resolved that she needed to have this child. The world needed something left behind of him, after all. He hadn’t lived quite long enough to leave a mark, and she knew he certainly would have wanted to.

“Hm? Yeah, sure thing. What’s goin’ on? You need to cry again?” She asked, her tone casual but her voice warm. Hiyoko had become one of her close friends after they met during winter break a while back, and maybe it was a little odd to have a best friend with such an age difference between them, but they really did have a close platonic bond that transcended time and space or something like that.

“No. Not right now,” Her tone was still hushed, as it often had been since that day. A lot of her spark had gone out. It wasn’t entirely gone, and she was sure it would return someday, but she was like the moon. She couldn’t truly shine without somebody brighter at her side. Even when she was younger, Ryouta had always been there. Without him, and without Sakuya, there wasn’t so much there to put the usual spring in her step.

“So what is it, then?”

“I have two things to ask, actually. One is… would you, by any chance, by my baby’s Godmother?” She questioned, “Not actually as any sort of religious thing, but I think it would be nice if they could call you Auntie Azami, don’t you think?”

“That’d be nice,” Azami answered brightly, “I do like kids, but I’m a little too old to have any of my own now, so at least I’ll get to be a part of yours’ life.”

“Maybe an even bigger part,” She suddenly sounded very serious, “Azami, if… if anything happens to me, it would mean so much to me if you could… if could take care of them.”

“Hiyoko, nothing’s going to happen to you, I’m sure of it,” Azami assured her, “But in the case that something does, I would be honored.”

“Thank you… so much.”


	38. The Creative Storybook

Once upon a time there was a beast.

She was a beast, true, but that was only what she was, not who she was.

But she was left alone anyway, when she was very young.  
It wasn’t so horrible, though,

Because then she could teach herself how to be strong. Which she did, she did it very well.

But because she only had herself to teach her, she only learned a few things.

She learned how to love,  
and she learned how to destroy.

That isn’t to say that she was bad, not at all,  
She was the sort of beast,  
Who could do good things  
with her destruction.

Whenever somebody she loved was in trouble, after all, she could destroy what had hurt them.

Well.

Until the thing that hurt them was something she couldn’t touch.

Medicine, pain, fear,  
Could not be destroyed.

Worry, distraction, crashing,  
Could not be destroyed.

But her heart could be destroyed.  
And it was.  
Because aside from destroy,  
All she knew how to do was love.

And she loved a bit too much.  
So when the ones she loved had gone,  
She found herself…  
Lost.

But not completely.

She had always been firm in her beliefs,  
and when she got it into her head that there had to be something…  
Anything at all,  
Left behind of who she had lost,  
and herself too,  
She would not change her mind.

But she knew about the consequences.  
Of course she did.  
She was a beast.

All she ever knew how to do  
Was love  
and destroy.

So when she tried to create,  
Create something she would love  
She succeeded for the first time in her life in creating something.  
But there was a cost.

She destroyed herself.

Poor beast, poor beast.


	39. Chapter 39

“I can’t… no… we can’t…”

“What else could we… possibly do…”

“Cornered…

n o  
wway out….”

“But we can’t…”

“It would be... s o m ucuch worse…”

“We don’t ….. have a n  
y   
options…”

“We could take a risk.”

-  
What a risk it was.

And through the flames the walls fell, and one death was immediate. A crushing defeat, and a crushing blow to the other who stood staring and choked on the smoke.


	40. The Comorbid Storybook

Once upon a time there were two puzzle pieces, who were lovers.

And the puzzle pieces were torn, and tattered, and had been soaked in so many tears that they were now filled up with mildew.

The edges were darkened by time and mistakes, and what had once been a beautiful picture,

Now depicted a tale of woe.

Too much time, too much pain, had passed them by. They had once been all that kept each other going in some form of necessity,

But they did. Did keep each other going. They were worn out, but their picture was still beautiful, once.

Just too long. Too long, too much time spent in such a distinct Hell with nothing but each other.

They still fit together perfectly.  
Still made a picture.

But the picture was not pretty.  
Not happy.

Because they were beyond the point of managing with the help of each other.  
They were hanging on by a string.  
Both of them.  
And that string was the other puzzle piece.

There was a level of recovery they had both accomplished, a level of being okay that came from time;  
But for all that improved,  
There was still a particular horribleness festering deep within them both.

An incurable misery.  
For as much as they both loved each other, as much as they said that,  
They gave all their love away,  
And grew for themselves a garden of self-loathing.

And where before they held hands and led each other through this awful life they’d found,  
Their wrists had now melted together,  
Grafted into an inseparable pair.  
No matter what happened.

And one day, the puzzle pieces found their bad deeds catching up to them.  
They refused, though.  
Refused to fall another step into a world of broken souls.  
Refused to let themselves and each other shatter into any more pieces.

So they made another way out.  
Through the corner they were trapped in.  
With an understanding between them.  
They would either both escape,  
Or they would both die.

Even if it was possible for one to get out anyway.  
That really wasn’t possible.  
Because their puzzle had been glued together.  
And their fates were sealed.

Poor lovers.  
Poor lovers.


	41. Chapter 41

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TKS is going to be on hiatus during November due to NaNoWriMo! Be back soon!

Hitori was left reeling from what he’d just witnessed, and he certainly wasn’t the only one. To see how the people who he knew, who he cared about, had died… it was certainly jarring, but he only had a second to linger on his feelings, given that the entire reason he and everyone else had woken up was because Nageki had collapsed to the floor. He tried to lunge forward again, still finding himself stuck to the floor as he shouted, “What did you do to him!?”

“Ugh,” The administrator grumbled, “That was awful. Only the first and last memories even showed the deaths at all, and they just got steadily choppier… but then, what can I really expect of a memory-viewer from such a young star, even with the amplification…”

“Answer me, asshole!” Hitori yelled, voice full of concern. The standing members of the light court looked at him in shock, still not used to his outbursts. Kazuaki knew, though, as did the members of Hitori’s own court. It wasn’t surprising to them at all, especially not in matters pertaining to Nageki.

“Rude,” He responded, crossing his arms, “It’s fine, he just got a little burnt out. He’ll be back on his feet soon enough. The real problem is that we didn’t get through all the memories we needed to.”

“No! The real problem is that you did that to Nageki!” He persisted, absolutely furious, “I can’t imagine that didn’t cause him some level of harm, and since he passed out you obviously exhausted him!”

“As much as I hate agreeing with any member of the dark court, he is correct. I had migraines for weeks after I overexpended my teleportation ability,” Sakuya, surprisingly, backed him up.

“Hm? Well, given that you were using this one’s abilities for your security, I didn’t expect you to care about him as an actual person…” The administrator only looked perplexed.

“Of course he’s an actual person! What the Hell are you going on about?” Hitori continued to demand an explanation, face twisted up in rage, “When I linked the station to his ability, it made his job easier! It was a better course of action for everybody, including him… You’re only hurting him now! What sort of a person are you, to treat somebody like this!?”

“I’m not?” The representative said, “I’m an artificial being for the purpose of star registration. It’s too dangerous to send actual employees out to random stars which could be controlled by people as volatile as you… I can’t imagine I’d still be standing here if you’d gotten this angry outside of the projection.”

“I…” This statement got Hitori off guard, and all the passion faded from his face, leaving him looking completely shell-shocked and practically gasping for air. That was… that was completely correct.

“But then, I suppose you know that, given how you died. Both of you kings will have to just speak aloud how it was that you died, seeing as the memory-viewer is now incapacitated.”

Hitori just stood there in silence for a few moments, then looked at Kazuaki. There was something particularly pathetic to him in that moment, something more than limp robes and lackluster regality. His face was filled with a broken regret, but this wasn’t even the worst thing he’d have to admit to today, was it? He still had an entire trial ahead of him… “The way I died, I… I drowned. I drowned after jumping off a bridge, into the river below it.”

“Hitori!” Kazuaki seemed shocked, and taken aback. Moreso than Hitori had expected, so that certainly wasn’t promising for later events. Kazuaki was… practically horrified, “Why would you… How could you do something like that…? Hitori I told you… I told you not to… I said that… I said you should keep living…”

“And I did. For nineteen years. That was more than enough,” His voice was faint, “But I needed to punish myself somehow. So I stayed alive that long. That’s… good enough.”

“But Hitori, what did you even do wrong…?” He asked, then shook his head, wiping his eyes, “No, I’ll… find that out soon enough, won’t I? So let’s get this part done and over with… The way I died was, I drank bleach. However bleach kills people, burning or poison or whatever. That’s how I died.”

“...Wrong.” The administrator responded, looking horribly confused, “Of anybody to forget how they died, I never thought it would have been one of the rulers… But, I guess that’s it then. No need for a trial, we’ll just cut the railroad lines to the star and let you wait around in peace-”

“Wait,” Hitori said suddenly, putting a hand forward. The representative seemed taken aback, looking at that hand… right. Right, he wasn’t supposed to be able to move. Well, that was unimportant right now, “We will need a trial after all. Kazuaki didn’t forget how he died. He never knew in the first place. He was never really aware of what was going on, after all… as far as he knew, it was just the bleach.”

“If…” Kazuaki was still staring at him as he spoke, and all the others were watching in an intrigued silence, “If the bleach didn’t kill me, Hitori, what did?”

“Kazuaki…” He took a deep breath, then pulled back the hand he’d stuck out and pressed it to his own face, “I did.”

“W-What…?”

“I killed you. It was me. It wasn’t just my fault. I killed you with my own two hands.”


	42. The Royal Storybook

Once upon a time, there were two kings.  
No, they weren’t really kings, were they?  
They were only.  
Liars.

No no, that wasn’t quite right either.  
They were kings and liars.  
They were the the two lying kings.

The first king was a king for longer,  
and he was a beloved king  
The King was not a very good king,  
but everybody liked him enough,  
and even if he wasn’t a good king,  
he was very kingly.

And he was beloved.

He was a good person.  
And he was an okay king.

But he was still a liar too.  
He had lied a long time ago,  
He had kept a secret that he should not have kept.

When the other king discovered this secret.  
Discovered this lie.  
The King paid for it with his life.

Not at first, though.  
The Dark King let him go,  
But he did not let himself go.  
He went and he  
Killed himself….

But that was a lie too.  
He didn’t kill himself.  
The Dark King killed him.

-

The other king was not a very good king at all.  
He carried himself not like a king,  
But like a peasant wearing king’s robes.

Perhaps it was because,  
if he had walked with any sort of confidence,  
He would have been a villain  
Not a king.

He was not beloved.  
He wasn’t hated either,  
But he was not beloved,  
Nor was he trusted.

The Light King loved him.   
The Light King trusted him.  
The only other people who did  
were his own court.

And everyone who distrusted him,  
was very right to do so.

He didn’t lie.  
He never lied.  
That was what he thought.  
That was what he wanted to be.

But he had forgotten many things about his past.

So when he was asked why he knew how to do something horrible,  
He lied.  
Lied to The Light King  
And lied to himself.  
Because he didn’t know the truth.  
So he made something up.

And he lied one other time.  
One certain lie.  
One outright lie.

A lie that The Light King now knew about.  
So it was an actual lie.

The Dark King lied  
when he said...

He didn’t want The Light King dead.

 

Poor Liars.  
Poor Liars.


	43. Chapter 43

“Hitori, what are you saying…? You didn’t. You tried to kill me but then you didn’t. Then I went and I killed myself. That’s what happened… right?” Kazuaki asked, stepping closer to Hitori and grabbing his shoulders, looking at him wide-eyed and more worried than scared. When his eyes met Hitori’s he noticed something… odd. They were cloudy. No, not just cloudy… moving. Kind of like static, “Hitori, are you okay…?”

“No… I’m not…” He muttered slowly, weak as he met Kazuaki’s gaze and had to tell him what had really happened, “There was nothing I could do to help you in that moment, you drank too much for anything to… help you… but Kazuaki, bleach can’t kill you that quickly. It’s slow, and painful, and when you told me how it hurt, I just…” The static in his eyes seemed to get worse, creeping from his irises into his pupils as well, “I didn’t want you to go through that… so I killed you. I held you so tight that you couldn’t breathe. I didn’t lie at all when I told the police that I killed you. I… I’m so sorry… Ah, that sounds so much better than it is… I can’t pretend I wasn’t being selfish too… Maybe if I’d called an ambulance you might have had a chance, but if you lived through that, things between us would have never been the same...”

“Hitori I’m not… I’m not angry at you, Hitori please, what’s happening to your eyes? You’re scaring me…! Are you okay??” He was starting to panic, digging his fingers into Hitori’s shoulders where he held them.

“Let’s… Let’s just move on to the trial,” The representative interrupted, looking wary and confused, “We should get this over with quickly. It’s clearly having a negative effect on his countenance… Letting him stay in that state for too long could have disastrous results.”

“Disastrous!?” Kazuaki’s head snapped around to look at the administrator, then he let go of Hitori’s shoulders and stepped back, his previous tears turning to all-out bawling as he hid his face in his hands.

“Well then, why don’t we skip the trial altogether?” Yuuya added his two cents, finally recovered from having his memory projected in such a broken manner, “We passed half of the test, couldn’t we go back to the way we’ve always been? Unregistered, but still on the line?”

“No…” Hitori’s voice sounded slow and weak, “If we did that… Hoppe couldn’t move here… We have to get registered…”

“Forgive me for caring more about the well-being of my king than the ability of somebody to move here. She’ll still be fine living where she has already, but if we go through with the trial whatever’s happening could get worse. And if it is truly, disastrous…”

“No, no, we can’t do that. That would be breaking protocol. We only have to try not to bother him too much. I will… change the order of witnesses, to try and be less… incitatory,” The representative responded, seeming less and less composed as time went on, “I’ll begin with the witnesses who were not actually harmed by his actions.”

“Hm…? I suppose that would be my cue,” A voice sounded, as somebody stepped into the area next to the representative, “Very jarring, your way of calling witnesses. I would appreciate if you stayed out of my head in the future,” He turned to face the courts, and was immediately recognized as none other than Shuu Iwamine. Yuuya scowled a bit, but… well, enough time had passed, and the anger he’d felt had only been brief, towards this particular person. So it wasn’t such a big deal. Anghel shrunk away a bit too, but otherwise there wasn’t much reaction.

“Shuu Iwamine,” The representative spoke, “Please, do tell what harm Hitori Uzune brought upon you to qualify you as a witness today.”

“Nothing too horrible. All he did was hide my body. I’m almost grateful, actually,” He smirked, “I always did think I would have preferred to disappear inexplicably than for people to know how I died. I hold no further grudges in my afterlife.”

“So why did you…”

“Why I agreed to be a witness? It’s simple, really. I needed a captive audience to speak to somebody else,” His eyes darted upward and fell on just who everybody would expect, “Yuuya Sakazaki. If I tried to speak with you any other time, you would probably just leave me in the dust… but I would like you to know that I’m not upset that you killed me. You won. I overstepped my bounds in our game of cat and mouse, so you made me pay for it. I should have known better than to make a target of your boyfriend. It was only fair.”

“You mean…” Yuuya’s expression turned quizzical, “Actually I’m just entirely confused right now.”

“It’s simple. Then again, you never were one to wrap your head around things. Had you investigated me too closely, I would have killed you. I got too close to your personal life, so it only makes sense you would kill me. Why, it was especially foolish of me to use such crude words as would anger you enough to overpower me with as much ease as you did. I would also like to extend an apology to the both of you for my actions. Very well, I will be on my way now. Oh, but… a word of warning. It may be best if the two of you leave before the next witness.”

“Is that allowed?” Yuuya asked the representative as Shuu left. He had an idea of who the next witness could be, and he had no desire whatsoever to see, or let Anghel see who it was.

“I suppose there’s no reason you need to stick around. Very well, I’ll eject you from the projection,” And with that, they were gone. Hitori tilted his head and moved his lips as if saying something, but no sound came out, and the movement was strangely stiff; but, the static in his eyes hadn’t spread any further yet, “And now for the next witness.”

“Well! Thank you for that entirely lackluster introduction! Don’t you know who I am??” A fanciful voice rose up, laced entirely with annoyance before he flourished, tossing his hair back behind himself, “I am Tohri Nishikikouji, Golden Scourge of the Galactic Train Line!”

“You…” Hitori hissed.

“Oh, I could say the same to you,” He took on a mocking tone, “Your Highness. Well, you aren’t the only one without a planisphere to make a name for yourself! So you’re a king, what does that matter? All wandering souls fear me now, and fear my brilliance! Finally, I can share my purest art without fear of retaliation, show off all of the train cars I have painted red…” He laughed, waving a hand in the air then bowing, “And I did it all without putting myself in your position! There is no law on the train, after all, no trial for me… but you, well, you will certainly pay for your misdeeds, Uzune…”

“What are those misdeeds… sir?” The administrator seemed put-off by Tohri’s behavior, as did everyone remaining in the building, but it seemed that uninvolved parties had been muted through the continued duration of the trial given the simple fact of Hiyoko’s silence. She was never silent unless she was being forced to be.

“Well, he hid my body! Covered my wondrous form in disgusting muck! To do such a thing to one such as me… To defile beauty so… He truly is disgusting…”

“You’re one to talk,” Hitori’s voice was gutteral and lackluster, “You are more disgusting. You deserved your death. You deserved to die a hundred times over.”

“Well, you certainly helped me to that number,” He scoffed, “Spending hours shooting me in the head whenever I became conscious… that sure was painful. Far too painful. Dare I say it was something close to torture, and it wasn’t even artistic in the least!”

“That was a post-death incident, Mr. Nishikikouji,” The representative interrupted, “And holds no standing in this trial. You may go now. And by may go, I mean goodbye,” And with that, Tohri was back in the out-of-view witness area, and somebody else was walking out.

Well, not exactly walking. More like… crutching, and Hitori recognized who it was immediately, and blinked a few times, shaking slightly, visibly anxious. The person in question locked eyes with him, and didn’t look angry. Only worried. That seemed to be a regular occurrence lately.

“Kanta… why are you… why are you here…” Hitori stammered out, words stilted. Kazuaki started crying even more after sneaking a peek at his eyes, which were looking even worse.

“Hitori, please try to calm down a bit, dude. I’m not here to testify against you. I want to advocate for you. I wanna help you out.’


	44. Chapter 44

“Why would you want to help me. You hate me. You hate me. You ha-” Hitori was completely blank as he said this, sounding more like a broken record than an actual person, so it’s a good thing Kanta cut him off.

“Hey you!” He pointed at Kazuaki, who just looked to him in confusion, “You’re like, his husband or something, right? Calm him down!” Kazuaki just nodded and turned to Hitori, confused as to what he should do, but ended up just kissing him to shut him up then wrapping his arms around him and trying to shush him, and Hitori seemed to just… become a statue, which was probably better than the way he was before, “Anyway. I’m here to talk about what happened way back when Hitori was still living at Heartful House. I’m here to talk about what he forgot. I’m here to talk about why he forgot it.”

“What he… forgot…?” Kazuaki asked, still holding him close with tears streaming down his face.

“Yeah. I know thanks to the other witnesses that he hid some bodies in his time with you, didn’t you ever wonder how he knew how to do that?”

“He told me he worked for a gang that made him hide bodies for them…”

“Well, that was probably all he could think of to explain it. I can’t say he lied to you, since he didn’t know the truth himself… probably made up the memories too. People do that. But that’s not actually how he knew how to hide bodies. I guess this is gonna incriminate him more, but really, he’s not so bad. Things just got out of hand. He forgot it because he couldn’t handle remembering, after all.”

“So what is it that… happened…?” Kazuaki asked fearfully, holding Hitori tighter, “Will hearing this upset him more?”

“Yes,” Another voice joined in; Nageki, finally standing up from the floor, “It will. I still don’t think he should know it.”

“Nageki!” Kanta turned to him, surprised, and a bit angry, “I know you think you’re doing what’s best for him, but I’m the only one who really knows the truth.”

“That’s wrong,” Nageki said simply, “You don’t. None of us do. You just know a little bit more than the rest of us, about what happened. I know best how it will affect Hitori, though, and I say that if you talk about what happened he’ll break even more than he already has.”

“Yeah, and he’ll recover, right?” Kanta asked, still standoffish but actually starting to listen.

“Well…” The representative butted in, “This happens very rarely, but aside from the direct effects it has, it can also spread to anybody who’s considered to have a linked destiny to him. That would be his court, and the other king. It does fade eventually… I think. I don’t know /everything/, but as far as I’ve heard-”

“As far as you’ve heard???” Kazuaki questioned, wailing, “You mean you haven’t even encountered it personally before??? That’s not comforting!”

“It’s not my job to be comforting. It’s my job to carry out the protocol,” He took a moment then, assessing the situation, “I think if you were to outright say what was going on, it would be a bigger problem, but maybe…” He took another glance at Nageki, “He could, potentially, share an understanding… He has the right skill combination to do so…”

“Provide an understanding?” Kanta asked, lost.

“I believe it’s… a way of viewing scenes that are related to memories, but that were not personally seen by anyone involved…” Nageki said slowly, “I could do that… if it’s the only way to tip-toe around the issue.”

“Nageki don’t hurt yourself more…” Hitori spoke again, still sounding dull. Worse than half asleep. Half unconscious. Maybe even half dead, even if he was already dead. He could still sound half-dead.

“Hitori, I may have been unconscious, but I heard what happened. You told the truth,” He said simply, then crossed his arms, “You owned up to what you’ve done, so if there’s anything I can do to help you now… I will.”

“I don’t want you getting hurt…” Hitori practically hissed these words, getting him even more concerned looks all around.

“I won’t. A little bit of ability burnout isn’t that much of a problem, and if this is the only way to continue the trial without causing more problems by letting Kanta talk about it…” Nageki sighed, “I hate using this ability. It… bothers me, but this seems to be the only option right now.”

“Let’s commence it, then,” The administrator said, and Nageki only nodded.

-

“Hey, Uzune!” One of Hitori’s classmates ran up to him as he was eating lunch, and he looked up, raising an eyebrow. People rarely approached him, given that his presence at the school was hardly a common thing. He had to come in occasionally, of course, but most of his studies were done from home. Before he actually said anything to her, she continued, “I just checked the school board, and it says that you got top score on the math midterm! Congratulations, but… you never even come to school, so how did you…?”

“What, you’ve never heard of distance schooling?” He asked, returning his attention to his food. The girl blinked, then sat down next to him.

“Oh, that’s what you do? I thought distance school was for people who couldn’t handle normal school,” She questioned, looking over and staring at his lunch, “That looks good, did your girlfriend make it for you or something?”

“No, I don’t have a girlfriend. I made it,” He shrugged, “I can’t handle normal school. I need to work. I only come in on my days off.”

“Ohh, I see,” She nodded, then paused, “You probably don’t know who I am then, do you? I only know who you are because you’re absent so often. Your assigned seat is near mine, so whenever we have a substitute I have to be the one to day you’re not here. My name’s Ayano Ueda, it’s nice to meet you.”

“It’s nice to meet you as well, Ueda, though I can’t imagine that we’ll be seeing very much of each other,” He closed up his lunchbox, having eaten as much as he could at that point, then looked her over briefly, and seemed mildly concerned for a moment before holding the box out to her, “You’re not eating anything… why don’t you have the rest? It’s no skin off my back, I’ve been doing all right with money lately.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t…” She looked away, bubbly demeanor disappearing.

“You could, and you’re going to. You’ve got no lunch, and you’re… too thin. Please,” He sighed, and she frowned, but took the lunchbox anyway.

“You’ve got some sorta weird taste in girls…” She muttered, opening the box again and starting to eat out of it.

“What? No, it’s not like that,” He shook his head and crossed his arms, “I just… don’t like seeing hungry people. It bothers me.”

“Oh, I get it!” Her earlier cheer returned, and she elbowed him, which caused him to scoot away a bit on the bench. Barely an inch, she didn’t even notice, “We’ve got a mother duck on our hands here, don’t we? I never thought I’d meet a real person like that… especially not somebody as dark and mysterious as Hitori Uzune…” She chuckled, leaning closer to his face, and he leaned away in tandem.

“I mean, I wouldn’t quite say that,” He looked away from here, now visibly uncomfortable to a point that she might notice; though if she did, she didn’t seem to care, as she scooted closer to him.

“Mm, no, you totally are,” She giggled, then finished off eating before handing him back the lunchbox and standing up, flouncing away, but turning back to look at him midway to the door, “See you around, Uzune! Remember my name, all right?”


	45. Chapter 45

Momo was working on her homework in the kitchen when she heard a knock on the door, the only person in the house who could hear a knock over the vacuum in the other room. She was glad that Yuusuke had finally taken the initiative to do something without being asked, though she was pretty sure it was just an excuse to avoid working on his own schoolwork... plus, though Kokoro was sitting right there with her, she was a bit hard of hearing.

Really, it was only fate that Momo would be the one to open the door, it seemed. Really, it was just coincidence, but nonetheless, she pulled open the door to see a girl there wearing the uniform for the high school, “Hello! Who are you?”

“Oh! My name’s Ueda. Ayano Ueda, I was wondering if maybe, Hitori Uzune was here?” She questioned, leaning to look past Momo into the house, “Are you his sister?”

“Mm, sort of,” Momo nodded, stepping aside to let Ayano in, “Let me make you some tea, he’s not here right now, but he should be soon! He’s getting groceries, because today is Friday. We always have a nice family dinner on Fridays!” She said cheerily, going over to the stove and putting a kettle on despite hardly being able to reach it, “Did Hitori forget something at school? I know he went in today…”

“That’s right,” Ayano nodded, then pulled a pencil out of her pocket, “He dropped this while leaving, so I thought that I should return it.”

“That’s just a pencil,” Kokoro joined the conversation blankly, staring at Ayano. Well, no, it was more like staring through her. For a young child, she had a very harsh gaze, “It could be any pencil. You came up with that story on the spot, didn’t you? I bet you just wanted to come here to see Hitori. Well,” She lifted up the pocketwatch she wore around her neck and closed her eyes, turning the hands, then looked at it, “That’s not okay.”

“Kokoro!” Momo scolded her, crossing her arms, “That’s no way to treat our guest! Stop trying to use that silly clock to tell fortunes all the time, that’s no better than a magic 8 ball!”

“Are you… also Uzune’s sister? Or, wait, if you were Uzune’s sister, then you would also be Uzune to me, since I don’t know you that well yet, and-” Ayano asked, but then Kokoro just shook her head, dropping the pocketwatch.

“No. I am Kokoro, and this is Momo. We don’t have last names. I guess you could say that we’re Hitori’s sisters, though,” She nodded a bit, then flashed Ayano a smirk, “Close enough to sisters, anyway, that I’m going to keep a close eye on you…”

“What does the weird girl mean?” Ayano asked, deadpan, of Momo, but then quickly caught herself, “I mean, what does Kokoro mean by that, Momo?”

“Oh it’s okay, you can call her the weird girl. I think that’s a good nickname for her,” Momo nodded, “You must have noticed on your way in, there’s a sign lying on the ground? It’s face-down, but it says ‘Heartful House Orphanage’. So we’re all kind of siblings here. Yuusuke is in the living room vacuuming, and I think the others are upstairs. Probably playing the floor is lava, or something like that.”

“I see…” Ayano nodded, rubbing her chin then suddenly tensing up and making a squeaking noise, “So Uzune is an orphan?? He just keeps on getting more interesting…! I just wanna hold him and let him know it’s all gonna be just fine!”

“Ha. Good luck with that,” Somebody else joined the conversation, and Ayano turned to see another child in the doorway, on crutches. The vacuuming sound had stopped in the meantime, “I reaaaally don’t think Hitori would let you do that, kid.”

“Um. I’m older than you,” Ayano noted, dropping her arms back to her side and frowning, “And what makes you say that? I can definitely make Uzune fall for me.”

“First of all, why?” Kanta asked, raising an eyebrow, “Second of all, I really don’t think so. Hitori hardly even seems interesting in friends, let alone a girlfriend.”

“Because I’ve got a crush, duh,” She rolled her eyes, “That’s just because he’s a sad person. It’s my mission to make him, unsad. I’ve sort of liked him for a while now, cause he’s smart, and he seems like a little lost puppy, but then the moment I tasted his cooking I really did fall in love!”

“Uh,” Momo just gave her a strange look.

“What? It’s not as ridiculous as love at first sight, anyway…” Ayano frowned again, crossing her arms, “I never thought I’d be getting judged on my life choices by a bunch of children…”

“If you want to get close to Hitori then you better get used to it,” Kanta chuckled, then pointed at her with a single finger gun, “As his younger siblings, it’s our job to look out for him! That includes keeping an eye on his friends and potential love interests.”

“I don’t like you,” Kokoro said simply, her eyes still seeming to stare daggers right through Ayano, “I do not approve of any relationship between you and my big brother.”

“Why are you all being so mean to me!? You should be glad that I like him, nobody else does!” Ayano protested, then hesitated, clearing her throat and sighing, “A-Anyway, I don’t need your blessing to go out with him…”

“Because you’re sketchy,” Kanta responded simply, with a shrug, then turned as he heard the door open. Hitori walked in, carrying grocery bags on his arms. As soon as he got to the kitchen he dropped them all, then sighed heavily, rubbing his arms. Carrying those groceries, the distance between the store and Heartful House, was pretty tiring, especially considering how Not Strong he was.

“Hey, I’m home,” He said after putting the bags down, then looked up, and froze for a moment before smiling sheepishly, his voice a little shaky, “O-Oh, Ueda, what are you doing here?”

“I came to return-” She started, but was cut off by Kokoro’s spiteful deadpan.

“She came here to see you, because she has a crush on you. I do not approve.”

“A… crush on me?” Hitori asked, raising an eyebrow, then shook his head, “Ueda, that’s ridiculous, we only just met today.”

“Well, I mean, I…” She looked away awkwardly, then grumbled and shot a glare at Kokoro before suddenly storming off, leaving the building entirely, and by that merit, leaving everyone but the one who’d triggered the outburst in shock.

“What… was that about…” Hitori mumbled, and Kokoro, remaining unfazed, just shrugged, “I mean, she’s a nice girl, but we just… met. I hardly even feel platonic attachment to her yet, let alone anything romantic…”

“I figured as much,” Kokoro nodded, “It’s not out of the question for her to have approached you because she found you attractive, of course, it’s plausible for her to like you… but I don’t like her. She seems weird. My clock said that you should stay away from her.”

Hitori sighed and chuckled at the same time, patting her on the head, “You’re always looking out for me, Kokoro. You and that clock of yours. Thanks for that, I think after you annoyed her like that she’ll probably leave me alone. I guess I’ll have to avoid her, when I do go into school from now on.”

“What? She wasn’t that bad, you don’t have to avoid her completely…” Momo pouted, “You should at least make a few friends your age, Hitori! To talk about grown-up stuff with.”

“I don’t know if I could be friends with Miss Ueda, though,” He shrugged, putting groceries into the fridge as he spoke, “Kokoro’s right, she is kind of scary…”

“Scary?” Momo asked, tilting her head, “She was weird, but I don’t think she was scary…”

“Maybe scary isn’t the right word, I’m not sure. Maybe creepy is a better term? When she talked to me earlier today she was acting weird too. It made me pretty uncomfortable,” He paused, “She was getting really close, which was off-putting. I don’t really like being that close to strangers,” Hitori always thought of physical contact as something meaningful, only to really be shared between family and friends, not with any old classmate. And, there was one more thing bothering him. How did Ayano Ueda… find out where he lived…?


	46. Chapter 46

Hitori didn’t go to school again for a few weeks after that, just to be on the safer side of things. His days off, he spent at home cleaning instead. The others went to school occasionally though, of course, and he continued to help them with their distance studies as well; he just didn’t go to the school himself. If he stayed out long enough, after all, Ayano would probably forget about him. Hopefully.

It was one of those aforementioned days when he first got the feeling that, despite being completely alone (all the others had elected to go into school, as there were assemblies at the middle and elementary schools) he was being watched. It was a new feeling, of course, given that he hadn’t previously been alone, and yet… it was familiar, too, and when he thought about it a bit longer, he realized that he’d felt the same inexplicable shivers down his spine when he’d been out around town on his own before, occasionally…

But maybe if he got out of the house it would be better? In any case, he’d finished all the chores already, and it would be a few hours yet till any of the others arrived home, so there was no reason for him not to go for a walk. And, when he left, he did start feeling better, if only for a short while. That particular feeling subsided, true, but he was immediately disheartened to run into some of his… other classmates.

“Whoa, Uzune. So you aren’t dead,” One of them chuckled, crossing his arms. Hitori went to silently duck past him, but the other one stepped up to block the way, “We were starting to think you did, but you’ve really just been ditching all this time?”

“I… no…” He muttered, looking away, “I’m in distance school…”

“Oh, yeah, that’s right,” The other one that hadn’t spoken yet nodded, “Your mental health and all. Can’t imagine school’s all that nice to you.”

“How did you-” He started, but then just stopped and stood there, stood completely still. Well, he had almost thought he’d been wrong about the impending disaster an encounter like this could come to, but clearly that wasn’t the case. Most people at school had never cared for him much, not that he really understood why. Maybe he was just too quiet. The teachers loved him, but other students, not so much.

“Duh. I’m the infirmary aid,” That same classmate held out an ID on a lanyard around his neck. Shinjiro Tanaka. Hitori took note of the name, “All I had to do was take a look through the medical records.”

“Why, though?” Hitori asked, taking a step backwards.

“Cause I was curious,” Shinjiro shrugged, closing the distance Hitori had just created, causing him to cross his arms and shrink back a little bit, “I mean, you always seemed like a pretty weird dude to me, and nobody else really seems to like you much either. You’re confusing. A top student who barely ever comes to school, and never even talks to anyone? Makes sense now, though. Of course they’d give you special treatment with a record like that. Dead parents, and crazy to boot? Ugh. Doesn’t leave much of a shot for the rest of us. Rude.”

“I’m just good at math… it’s not like I’m exemplary in other subjects…” He muttered, looking down at the ground, “I’m not getting any special treatment. Well, unless you count the especially bad treatment you’re giving me right now.”

“Well. Never thought you had attitude like that in you,” Shinjiro laughed, and the other joined in on his chuckling, “Not that it’s surprising, though. Can’t imagine somebody with a diagnosis like that’d really be as passive as you seem to be.”

“Could you just… leave me alone, maybe? I don’t understand why you hate me so much,” He bit his lip, looking away from the both of them.

“Ah, yeah, sure. We’ll leave you alone, if… you come to school tomorrow. There’s something you ought to see in Bio class,” The other one spoke again, snickering slightly.

“Yeah, okay, fine, just go,” Hitori nodded, pushing past them now and walking in the opposite direction, away from them, and the things which had been pushing at his vision from the beginning of the encounter now found themselves fully formed in front of him. He kept walking, just kept walking. He knew that they weren’t real, the shadowy shapes which came out of the corners of his eyes and filled all he saw with a distinctly unsettling darkness. Not real. He could walk right through them… but he saw them nonetheless.

They were terrifying, honestly. Despite being nothing but shadows, they were nonetheless shadows where there shouldn’t be any, and they were large enough that he couldn’t see where he was going very well; he ended up walking into a telephone pole. He cursed under his breath, then grabbed onto the pole and sighed, squeezing his eyes shut.

“Do you want to know why they hate you?” A voice hissed in his ear, and he shook his head. These things rarely spoke, but when they did, they didn’t say anything good, “Too bad. You know, they hate you because they’re afraid of you.”

“That’s ridiculous,” He muttered, hoping nobody would hear. He couldn’t see if anyone was nearby, after all, “They don’t know…”

“They don’t need to know. People can tell, people can tell when they shouldn’t /trust/ somebody. Even if you’ve never done anything wrong, they will be afraid that you’ll hurt them, only because they feel you have the capacity to,” The voice stopped, then laughed at full force, “Oh, and you do! So they will try and quell you. They will not be afraid, if you are kept pinned down. Worthless. Worthless. Worthless. You could break free of it, of course. Prove their fears right, and they will cross the line into too afraid to hurt you anymore.”

“Shut up.”

“What, you want me to be quiet, Hitori? Too bad. I will always be here. I’m only looking out for your best interests, you know. You could cause so much pain… why not show that a little bit? If they realize that their fears truly do have reason…”

“I’m not going to do that.”

“Hm? Do what?” Another voice broke through, and he opened his eyes again only to see Ayano standing there, and the previous visions gone entirely.

“...Nothing,” Hitori muttered, removing his hands from the telephone pole and stuffing them into his pockets.

“Didn’t look like nothing to me,” She whispered, swinging her arms as she stepped closer, “You looked scared.”

“Ueda…” He muttered quietly, looking her in the eyes, though his voice was weak, “Can you tell me… what you like about me?”

“Eh? Why?” She questioned, pouting, “You made it obvious you don’t care anyway.”

“Oh, that’s true, I don’t and won’t care.”

“At least you’re honest. Why, then?”

“Because you’re the only person my age who likes me at all. Everyone else seems to hate me, and I don’t understand why. I’ve never done anything wrong, never even bothered trying to make friends, any time I went to school I only focused on being a good student.”

“I… well, for one thing, you’re dark and handsome. Two thirds of the way to a perfectly swoonworthy person by any standard, and the other third is… a few things. You seem like a sad person, and everything I’ve found out about you just seems to confirm that… and, well, you’re really mysterious. When I look at you, I get this racing feeling in my heart that you could do anything you set your mind to… anything, dark. You’re like an emo but without actually being emo. It’s exciting, knowing that I can’t trust you.”

“And… that’s why people hate me, isn’t it?”

“So you could tell after all. Yeah, I think so. They say that everybody loves a villain, but really there’s only some people who find the idea of a dangerous person to be exciting and attractive.”

“But why? Why am I untrustworthy, why am I frightening? I’ve never done a thing to hurt you, or anybody.”

“I don’t know,” Ayano shrugged, stepping even closer and leaning next to his face with a smirk, “But, do you believe in fate? I do, and I have a theory. You just haven’t done anything yet,” She just giggled a little, grabbing his hand and holding it so tight he couldn’t pull away, “But you will, and that’s what people are picking up on. You’re going to hurt a lot of people, Hitori Uzune. You’re not,” She poked his chest, then laid her hand across it, whispering something about his heartbeat before continuing, “A good person. And people can tell, even without knowing about your… issues, that it can’t be too long before you snap all over us. I want to be there with you when that happens, Uzune…”

“Please stay away from me and my family,” He responded calmly enough, his voice barely squeaking at all. She finally let go of him and stepped away, before giggling and dashing off in the direction from whence she came. And finally, Hitori was alone.

He just had to go back home. Everything would be fine. He’d go to school tomorrow, like the bullies wanted, then he’d go to the grocery store and go home to make dinner, because it would be another Friday, another day for all of them, a day where he could pretend that everything was well in the world, because when he was with them, it was. It really was.


	47. Chapter 47

Hitori felt their eyes on him the minute bio class begun. Those two, staring at him, perhaps surprised that he’d actually come. Ayano was watching him just as intently as they were, which only made him even more uncomfortable. As class wore on, it seemed that their acts of staring led to others watching as well, wondering why exactly those three were looking at Hitori Uzune so intently. Uzune, who rarely came to school at all. Uzune, who got the best math scores in the building. Uzune, who always wore the winter uniform no matter the time of year and who always accessorized the dark outfit with that contrastingly crimson scarf.

Halfway through class, the teacher stood up again, having first given a lecture then assigned a worksheet, “Okay, class is half over, so it’s time to continue with our disorder presentations. Today we have Shinjiro Tanaka’s group, presenting on the impact of Narcolepsy and Borderline Personality Disorder in conjunction.”

Hitori froze. He felt briefly, like he couldn’t breathe, and he wanted to get up and run from the class, but found instead that his muscles simply wouldn’t listen to him. He was completely stuck in place, taking long and labored breaths, blinking, but otherwise fully incapable of movement.

“Thank you, Ms Minako,” Shinjiro said simply as he walked to the front of the room and pulled up his presentation, “First off, a crash course on what the disorders mean individually. Narcolepsy is a disorder characterized by Excessive Daytime Sleepiness, which comes at random times and is overwhelmingly impossible to ignore, often called sleep attacks. About seventy percent of diagnosed narcoleptics also experience a symptom called cataplexy, which is the loss of muscle control similar to the paralysis of the body that occurs during REM sleep. It’s often triggered by intense negative emotions such as anger, fear, and above all, panic,” Shinjiro shot a knowing look over to Hitori as he said this, then continued.

“In addition to EDS and Cataplexy, narcoleptics can experience hallucinations which are primarily visual, but can also be auditory at times. These hallucinations, just as cataplexy, do mimic the body’s state of dreaming. Narcoleptics will commonly report a lack of dreaming during nighttime sleep, only because the memory of the hallucinations overshadows any sleeping dream they may have had. Borderline Personality Disorder, on the other hand, is completely different. The two disorders have nothing in common, though it is fascinating to examine the impact of having them both.”

“BPD, as the disorder is often abbreviated to, is a disorder in which a person is impulsive and emotionally fragile. Common symptoms include extremist opinions of other people, fear of abandonment, impulsive behaviors which harm oneself or others; particular those related to anger, and a sense of emotional detachment from a self-identity. There’s also paranoia, and feelings of being hated by even the people who are close to the afflicted person.”

“Now, how do these two relate? It’s simple. BPD has a severe impact on the way that hallucinations born of narcolepsy may act. Case studies of narcoleptics show that the hallucinations are usually bizarre visuals and rarely make sound at all, and when they do, they don’t speak. However, observation of a test subject,” Ayano snickered and poked Hitori when Shinjiro said this, and he only felt even more terrified in this classroom, “Has revealed that narcoleptic hallucinations of a borderline person will often voice the person’s paranoia back to them. As we cannot see the hallucinations ourselves, this is only speculation, but…” Shinjiro smirked now and pointed at Hitori, “Given the test subject’s appearance right now, I can only imagine we hit the nail right on the head.”

Hitori was finally able to move, and every part of him screamed to get out of there. Get out of there and come up with a plan to get back at Shinjiro Tanaka, who had really just wanted to play a mean prank. Who knew that excluding a few malicious people, most people really just felt indifferent towards Hitori Uzune. Who wanted to make a fool of him in class and play on his paranoia, after discovering it existed. And Ayano, too, who was obviously a conspirator in this. It was only a prank. A cruel prank, but a prank nonetheless…

But not to Hitori. No, this was painful. If they didn’t hate him before, weren’t afraid of him before, they sure as Hell would be now that they knew.

Hitori was walking home, having left the school, or at least going in that direction. As freaked out as he was by what had just occurred, he still needed to stop at the grocery store. It was still important that they have their Friday family dinner, just as always. Because then he could feel normal again, he could feel okay, he could feel as if he wasn’t surrounded by people who wanted him dead, because wasn’t that hatred? He knew if he ever hated somebody, as he did now feel towards Shinjiro Tanaka, he would want them dead, so with everyone definitely hating him now, he was terrified beyond words.

He was in the produce aisle at the grocery store when somebody grabbed his shoulder, and he turned around with a start, only to see Ayano there. He had no words for her; actually, he had many, but he didn’t quite want to say them at the moment, still in his shock.

“Hey, Uzune,” She spoke softly, “What are you gonna do now…?”

“I’m going to finish my grocery shopping, get home, and make dinner,” He muttered harshly, “And you’re not going to follow me this time. Crazy bitch.”

“Woooow, rude,” She frowned, “Look, I wasn’t following you for Tanaka. I was following you before he even talked to me, okay? He caught me watching you and had the idea to do this. I love you, sure, but not so much that I’d pass up a wad of cash and the chance to see you angry,” She giggled a bit, “Because really, they weren’t all that afraid of you before. I just made you think so with the notes ~ I left you…” She wrapped her arms around him and he tensed up, “Please don’t hurt me, on a sticky note, back in elementary school… was all it took to get you thinking everybody hated you, because they were afraid of you…”

“All… all the way back then…?” His voice caught in his throat as he continued to stare fearfully at the lettuce display in front of him.

“Mmhmm! I’ve liked you for a long time, Uzune… Can I call you Hitori? I really would just be the happiest girl in the world, if you would do something wrong, and then we could be partners in crime… so romantic…!” She whispered, right in his ear, “So forgive me if I push you a little bit, but I know you’re capable of terrible things and I’d really love to see them.”

“No… Ueda, please, just get out of my life,” He pleaded, eyes starting to water as he attempted to get out of her grip. She was stronger than him, “I don’t like you, I never will like you. You scare me and I hate you. Whenever I see you I fear for my life, and whenever you touch me I wish I were already dead,” His words were harsh, but helpless, “You don’t love me at all. You’re just in love with the idea of me, just go find yourself somebody who’s already a criminal. Leave me alone. Please…”

“You really feel that way about me, huh…?” She asked, finally letting go of him and stepping back, “You boys are all the same. You can’t appreciate when a girl as devoted as me comes along. Oh, but I guess I’m just… too scary, still. Too messed up. Someday, Hitori, when you’re just as rotten as me, you’ll come to me. I know it. I’d do anything for you… even leave you alone, for now. But you’ll slip up and I’ll be back and then,” She smiled ever-so-sweetly, “We’ll get married!” And with that, she was gone.

He should have been relieved that she’d agreed to leave him alone, but honestly he was still just too frightened to process any sort of positivity from the situation. He took a few deep breaths, finished his grocery shopping, then returned to Heartful House.

-

“Do you hate me?” Hitori asked suddenly, while everyone was eating dinner. They all only stared at him for a few minutes, then shook their heads. Not in tandem, but they all did.

“Why would you ask something like that?” Kokoro questioned, quietly.

“Because a lot of people do, I think. They think I’m not trustworthy, or that I’m scary,” He shrugged, looking away, “I just need some reassurance that at least you don’t.”

“Yeah Hitori, we trust ya!” Yuusuke spoke first, wiping his nose.

“And the only time you’re scary is when you get upset with us for not doing our chores…” Hoppe added in.

“Thank you…” He nodded slowly, smiling as he continued to eat, the topic, in essence, dropped.

However, it wasn’t out of mind, and worry was planted for some of Hitori’s siblings; worry about him, that was. Concern for his well-being. Fear that maybe he wasn’t really doing okay.

He wasn’t.


	48. Chapter 48

It felt like giving up.

It felt like giving in.

To everyone, and everything.

To Ayano, to the shadows, and to the conceptions of his classmates.

Oh, and he was giving in, he certainly was. When the shadows surrounded him in silence for hours, plaguing his vision before finally whispering to him, promises of being left alone. Better to only be feared, than to be the way he was now. Treading that line, and left only in a perspective of hatred. He was a freak to them, now. Not all of them, maybe, but certainly enough to make him feel… horrible. Enough for the shadows to take root in his heart and in his mind.

He had to prove that he wasn’t only somebody to turn into a victim, prove that he didn’t find it funny, prove that it, all along, was not funny. He hated Shinjiro Tanaka enough to want him dead now, because that was all he knew of hatred, but he wouldn’t kill him. He would only frighten him. Like the shadows said. No, this wasn’t what Ayano had wanted of him at all. This wasn’t bad enough for her. Just for the shadows. Just for himself.

“Shinjiro Tanaka. Meet me in the junkyard at ten PM, Sunday night.” 

An anonymous text message, having gotten Shinjiro’s number out of the school phonebook. Of course, there was no guarantee that he’d come, but Hitori could hope. Well, if he didn’t come, that would mean that the message itself was enough to scare him, so maybe that would be a good outcome after all. That was all Hitori really wanted, anyway. To scare him a little bit. Just a bit, just enough to be left alone.

And so Hitori waited, that night, at nine-thirty. He sat atop a pile of garbage and ignored the smell, there wasn’t much of a smell anyhow. Most of what was here wasn’t food waste, or really anything that decomposed easily. The strongest scent was that of rust, really. He was sitting on a particularly tall pile, practically perched. What he greatly lacked in strength he made up for in agility, and he doubted that most people, least of all Shinjiro Tanaka, would easily be able to follow him up without injuring themself or greatly disrupting the pile. Well, in the case of the latter Hitori would have a bit of an issue on his hands himself, but otherwise, it was perfect.

He got tired of perching after a while though and just sat normally, dangling his legs off the edge. When, whether Hitori really wanted him to or not, Shinjiro appeared, Hitori just kicked his legs nonchalantly and greeted him, “Ah, Tanaka. So you came.”

“Uzune. Should have known it was you. Here to rip me a new one for making fun of you in class? Why the junkyard? To creep me out, or something?” Shinjiro asked, looking up to where he’d heard Hitori’s voice from.

“Oh no, nothing like that. I just thought I might not have any… incidences of impulsive behavior, if I was somewhere I felt at home,” He laughed, pulling up one knee to his chest and leaning his cheek against it, showing a sickly sweet grin, “Get it? Because I’m /garbage/?”

“If you’re trying to make me feel bad, it’s not going to work…” Shinjiro responded, aggravated.

“Mm? So you don’t feel guilty, for making me out to be somebody volatile and… insane?” He shrugged, then sighed, “Oh, but I guess you wouldn’t, since you’re correct. Why, though, did you feel the need to do it?”

“Because I don’t like you. Simple as that,” Shinjiro shrugged, “You always seemed obnoxiously high and mighty, so I thought I’d try to bring you down a peg or two. I think it worked well enough.”

“Oh. Well, I never thought I was any better than you. Just look at your own research. Paranoia, I always thought that I was hated, a little bit. Now that I know I am, I’m honestly very frightened,” He frowned then, letting go of his leg and swinging them again, “Terrified, really. I think that I might have to… kill you, before you kill me.”

“That’s ridiculous. Why would you think I’d kill you?” Shinjiro asked, just sounding annoyed and confused.

“I don’t know what you would or wouldn’t do, Tanaka. After all, you got that Ueda girl to spy on me just so you could do that in class… It’s a lot of trouble to go through, just to make people hate me, but then, I guess that’s because you hated me first. If you’d go that far in order to hurt me, what makes me think you wouldn’t go to the trouble of killing me, too…?”

“Because that’s not the same thing at all. Kids are mean sometimes, Uzune. Doesn’t mean I want you dead.”

“It does, right now. Because you made people think that I’m crazy, and that… put my life in danger, Tanaka. Everyone’s watching me now and if I do one thing wrong, maybe they’ll kill me, or send me off to some institution that will…” He mumbled, and his fears sounded sincere.

“You’re overreacting,” Shinjiro said dismissively.

“Wouldn’t you like me to think that?” Hitori asked, a crooked smirk splitting his otherwise fearful face, “Then I’d let you go, and you’d live to kill me another day…”

“You’re bluffing, then…” His resolve was wavering now, and he actually took a step backwards.

“Oh, but would I…?” Hitori questioned, and the shadows pressed at the corners, and all the fears prior crashed down on Shinjiro Tanaka. All the nagging thoughts of the mystery behind Uzune. All the ideas that came into his head when he learned that the mysterious boy who rarely came to school, was prone to hallucinations. The graffiti left two years ago in the boys’ locker room which read ‘Uzune killed me’ in the very same handwriting as a student who’d gone missing, the graffitit which prompted an investigation of him until the missing student turned up alive and well. Any seed that had been planted against Hitori’s trustworthiness, and Shinjiro Tanaka ran.

He ran,  
And fell,  
And cracked his head open on the fender of a rusty car.

Hitori scrambled down after him, immediately running to him to assess the damage, yet knowing the truth as soon as he saw the blood. He whispered curses as the shadows countered his distress with “Well done” and hid the whole world from him but this empty body, and he knew that he had made a huge mistake, but the shadows beckoned him to deny not his fault, but his remorse.

“Ever since Shinjiro Tanaka first hurt you, it became a matter of kill or be killed.”

“He would have killed you. Maybe not himself, but you know that he would have.”

“It would have been because of what he did. Because he took the fear that dwelled silent and gave it a reason.”

“It’s really better this way.”

“So go on now. Hide the body. You can’t let anybody find out about this, after all.”

And Hitori Uzune listened to them.

He went home slowly, methodically, fighting his way through the night against darkness both natural and unnatural, and when he arrived home the shadows parted only to reveal for him a note on his pillow, in the handwriting of Shinjiro.

“That was a little sloppy, you left your fingerprints all over the old trunk you hid the body in. I cleaned it up for you, but you’re on your own next time.”


	49. Chapter 49

The amber alert for Shinjiro Tanaka was put out within twenty four hours.

Three hours after his death, Hitori was awoken by the ringing of his phone. Of course he couldn’t leave the phone on his body, that would be stupid. He had to at least erase the text he’d sent about meeting in the junkyard, but when he was woken up by a call from, as the caller ID revealed, the Tanaka family, he realized that wasn’t quite enough. As soon as the ringer ran out, he opened up the back of the phone, pulled the sim card, and snapped it in two before sliding the phone itself in between the floorboards. He’d often used that space to hide candy when he was younger, and it would now serve the perfect repository for phones; no, no, not phones. Just the one phone. This had been an accident after all. It wouldn’t be happening again.

“But it could.”

The shadows, they had no shape, not yet. They were only swirls of darkness, lacking in form but not in function. These shadows wanted him to kill again. These were not the same as the shadows of the dead who would one day haunt his every moment, but apparitions which wished to hurdle him into such a state that he might have reason to be haunted. They were only looking out for him… in a matter to allow them to eventually ruin him. After all, he was a self-destructive person.

“It’s not so bad, is it? Doesn’t it feel good to get away with something?”

He ignored them and went back to sleep. Or, well, the latter part was true, but he couldn’t help but hear their words. The worst part about it was that he knew that it was only him, that these shadows were apparitions only of his own subconscious, a part of himself that he wanted to deny, but that the hallucinations brought to the forefront.

When the alert was put out later, Hitori offered his greatest condolences to the family, and said that he’d do everything he could to help them find their missing son. The words flowed just like silk, and that was when he discovered in himself a great talent for lying, alongside an ability to smooth over the rough surface of a situation like this. He wouldn’t possibly be suspected, with such a kind promise to help, and nothing pointing to his involvement.

Nothing the police could catch, anyway.

Hitori went to a day of school again two weeks later, and he could tell. He was being left alone. No elbows in the hallways, no strange looks, and while there was no visible connection, the message among the student body was clear. Tanaka messed with Uzune, and now he was gone.

Ayano wasn’t in class that day, but Hitori hadn’t heard anything about her going missing, so he supposed she really did take the request to leave him alone to heart, even to the point of avoiding him the rare times he actually went to school. Good.

Near the end of the day, however, somebody grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him aside to the roof, nails digging into his arm, speaking harshly once they were out of earshot of anyone else, “Listen here, Uzune. I know that you killed Shinjiro Tanaka. He made fun of you in class, so you got rid of him. Disgusting.”

“That’s harsh…” Hitori muttered, trying to pull his arm away then locking eyes with his classmate whose name he wasn’t aware of, and while the other’s were harsh, his own were only fearful, “Please, let go of my arm, you’re hurting me…”

“Wouldn’t you like that?” The classmate hissed and only tightened their grip, “Then you could kill me too, for knowing, right?”

“No…!” Hitori protested, shaking his head, then looked down at his wrist, “I’d like that because you’re making me bleed.”

“Good,” The classmate shrugged, “Listen, I’m going to go to the police and I’m going to tell them that you killed him.”

“So what if you do? It’s not like you can prove anything,” Hitori mumbled, stepping backwards towards the edge of the roof, feeling the back of his legs press up against the low railing, “Please, let go of me…”

“What, are you scared of the truth?” The student lifted their other hand, roughly grabbing the front of Hitori’s shirt.

“No…” He whispered now, almost hyperventilating as he shook his head, “I’m scared that you’ll knock me off the roof…”

“You know…” The student let go of Hitori’s shirt, and his wrist, “If the police won’t believe me, maybe that’s the only way to give you what you deserve,” And the classmate went to push him, but just quickly enough, Hitori moved out of the way. Balance lost, the accusing classmate toppled forward.

“Well done,” The shadows whispered again.

When the student’s body was found, the school checked security footage, and saw every bit of their encounter. There was no sound on the cameras, however, and highschoolers rarely enunciated their words enough to have their lips read. As far as anybody could tell, it was only an encounter in which somebody had tried to kill Hitori, only to have their own life tragically ended in the effort of his survival. A situation like that, he didn’t even need to do anything about the body. Just let things take their course and prove not only his innocence, but his victimization.

He wanted to think that it wasn’t true, but it felt good. As much as he knew that shouldn’t, as absolutely aware as he was of the moral implications of having, indirectly, killed two people… the shadows were filling his mind. No, he couldn’t really blame them. He was only falling into that void inside of himself. He had always been like this. He had always been a monster. All he ever needed to do was accept that fact, and then… he’d have his best days ahead of him.

Really, they weren’t so bad at all. He never had to be afraid again, because the minute somebody became a threat, he neutralized them. He started pocketing their wallets, getting nice things for the other orphans with the money he picked up. To have been, now, so overtaken with these horrible thrills; the feeling of cutting a life short, the satisfaction in a believed lie, the pride of getting away with it each and every time as the missing person reports stacked up…

They were awful, awful thrills indeed, and yet he wasn’t quite fulfilled. No, he still had one person to find. He couldn’t be content in this life until he had disposed of the person who he feated most in this world. Until he got rid of Ayano Ueda…

Or himself.

As he lay on a rug in his room, a maroon rug that he kept over the hole in the floorboards, he watched the headlights of passing cars come through the window. There was a deadness to his eyes as the light passed over them, the rug was leaving marks on his cheek by now, and his hip was beginning to hurt as the rug was not very thick, and resembled lying on the floor by a close margin. The shadows circled him, still shapeless, still so horrible as they echoed a repeating chorus of his conflicting desires.

“Kill.”

“Die.”

“Kill.”

“Die.”

It was an hour spent that way, before he finally got to his feet and stumbled towards the kitchen. He pulled a drawer in the kitchen open, and ripped out a knife with stilted movements. He didn’t care what it was. He hadn’t been able to find Ayano to kill her, after all, so this was the only plausible response to the shadows’ urging.

He went to draw the knife across his wrist, only to find his hand stopped as he lifted it by a tight grip. So tight.

“I can’t just lose you like this, Uzune.”


	50. Chapter 50

Hitori locked eyes with Ayano Ueda.

“So if you’re far enough gone to wanna kill yourself, does that mean you’re far enough gone to be my boyfr-” She was cut off, quite literally. Hitori had managed to wrench his hand from her grip, and before she even gave another taunting word, he’d pulled the knife up and slit her throat.

As she fell, she managed even then, to pull a piece of paper from her pocket and hold it out to him, though by the time she landed hard on the linoleum she was most certainly dead. Hitori stood there for a moment, then reached forward and took the note, unfolding it to look at it with shaky hands.

“Hello, Uzune Darling~ If you’re reading this then it means that you killed me :’( but that means confession time! Does this handwriting look familiar?” The note’s writing changed to match that of the graffiti which had nearly gotten him questioned before, “Or this?” Shinjiro Tanaka’s, “Or even your own? Teehee, that’s right! Ayano Ueda may be a nasty, good-for-nothing sociopath, but at least she has one skill to her name. Forgery. Oh, and I guess one other. Stalking. Because I’ve been watching this whole time, Hitori, and did you know? Everyone you killed? They were plants, basically. I set them after you, because I knew that even when you started breaking, you’d only kill somebody you were afraid of. So in real terms, all of those deaths were on my hands. Oh, except for… mine. Wow, Hitori. Killing your own future bride? You really are a monster. I’m glad I got to be a part of that monster’s creation though, truly. My heart is forever yours, Uzune!”

He dropped the note on the ground, stumbling backwards, unsure of what to think or how to feel anymore. The shadows were silent and all he understood was that he was broken, smashed to pieces, a mechanism that wouldn’t work. He could no longer consider himself human, so he lifted that knife he had killed Ayano with. Stared at it, and all the guilt he could have felt over everything he’d done fell onto him. He was the worst kind of person, wasn’t he? An indisputable criminal, a murderer, a liar.

And as he turned the knife and plunged it into his own heart, he locked eyes with Kanta, who was standing there in the doorway, silently.

\- 

Hitori Uzune was floating.

Now, that didn’t make much sense, did it? He wasn’t even floating. He was sinking, sinking through deep and dark waters, but he didn’t understand why. Why would he be here? Hadn’t he just stabbed himself?

But this was not the exact progression of things. This was an understanding, and it soon came to light that this was not in the moments after Hitori Uzune had tried to kill himself, but in the seconds before he succeeded. It was strange, because he had no actual memory of being in the water when he died. The fall had taken care of that. Now he did, though, in this understanding. To serve as a reminder that he could not have died then, because this was how he ended up dying. And the shadows had shapes by then, and they whispered his guilt in his ear even as he died.

They told him often that he should just die for what he’d done, but called him a coward when he jumped. They took on the forms of the people who he’d loved the most, the people who he’d forsaken the most. Nageki, who he’d let die, and Kazuaki, who he’d killed himself.

He couldn’t have died back then, before he ever met Kazuaki to ruin him, before he made the foolish decision of thinking that he could keep Nageki safe. No, an ambulance was called, and his precious children… particularly Kanta, who had seen it all happen, had picked up on his lying skills and covered it up. Said that Ayano Ueda had attacked Hitori, then killed herself, rather than the other way around. And, through the fool efforts of modern medicine and his own willpower, the feeling that he couldn’t die while he still had so much to do, pulled him through.

He couldn’t go on with those memories, though. No, he couldn’t do it. To have been manipulated to the point where his entire self had been distorted so… no, to have been manipulated enough to show what could only be his true colors. He couldn’t go on living like that, but he couldn’t die yet either.

So he forgot.

He forgot about it,

But now he remembered, he remembered everything, and as he sunk through the darkness he was in his kingly robes once more, which floated out around him before become waterlogged and dragging him down even quicker. The black water he was sinking in…

It became the shadows.

“We only ever wanted to help you Hitori…”

“That’s right…”

_“You were a danger to the people you loved.”_

**“But you wanted to protect them all the same.”**

**_“So all your life, we urged you to realize you’re a monster.  
All your life, you should have died and never come back._ **

**_All your life, you really should have never been born in the first place._ **

**_But we couldn’t change that._ **

**_So we did the next best thing.”_ **

And Hitori Uzune was gone from this world.

Not quite erased.

But his body was a shell,

Holding nothing but his awful emotions.


	51. The Forgotten Storybook

Once upon a time, there was a monster.

Monsters, they were a lot like bears.  
Frightening,  
And very protective of their cubs.

This monster knew a lot of children.  
The children were not the monster’s children,  
Or even really the monster’s siblings,  
But they basically were.

That was the truth.  
This monster told a lot of lies.  
But that was a truth.

The only difference was that the children were not also monsters.  
They were only children.  
Children who were cared for by a monster.

The monster had been taken from his home when he was very young.  
His parents had been monsters too.  
So they had been killed.  
It was that simple.  
Monsters had to be disposed of as quickly as possible.

And the monster had been put in a new home.  
A new home with the children.  
And the monster,  
He did everything he could to make the children happy.  
He did everything he could to keep the children safe.

Because he was a monster.  
But these were his children.  
And he would do anything for them.

One day, the monster met a puppeteer.  
She was a very skilled puppeteer,  
Because she could tie strings to anybody,  
And make them dance for her,  
Even if they were living, and had free will.  
Even if they were a monster.

Especially if they were a monster,  
Because humans are only entertaining puppets for so long,  
But monsters never cease to be interesting.  
The stories she could tell with her strings tied to the monster.

The story of a serial killer,  
Or one of those people who ended up on the news after a foolish act of rebellion against some sort of building;  
Perhaps, he should destroy the school?  
The story of a hardened criminal.  
A mass murderer.

Oh, but the puppeteer, she wanted to tell the story of partners in crime.  
A story of a killer love,  
A story where she was the exception to his crimes.

She was not the exception.  
Even as she tied her strings,  
The monster hated her.  
Even as she wrote her story,  
The monster erased the word “love” whenever she put it down.

And, well,  
Even when the monster did fall in love one day,  
With somebody else,  
Even that love was no exception.  
Because the monster killed him too.

The monster tried not to be a monster.  
He tried so hard to do the right thing.  
Doing the wrong thing had always hurt.  
The monster didn’t want to be a monster.

But it was no use.  
Monsters can’t change.  
He would always be a monster.

Unless he stopped existing.

Poor monster?  
No.  
Poor anyone the monster ever met.

Poor penguin,  
Poor kiwi,  
Poor bird,  
Poor pigeon,  
Poor orphans.

Poor bee,  
Poor beast,  
Poor pearl,  
Poor puzzle pieces,

Poor pheasant  
Poor puppeteer

Poor King

Poor Nageki

Poor Hitori.  
Poor Hitori.


	52. Chapter 52

“Hello, Uzune Dear!” Back in the real world, somebody had taken the stand without being prompted to. The administrator was too busy panicking to tell her to fuck off like he probably should have, “Happy to see me??”

Hitori didn’t answer, of course he wouldn’t, but sparks flew off of him and the lights in the projection flickered.

“Ooh, sparks. Like the sparks between you and me!” She giggled, winking.

“Go… go away, Ueda…” Kazuaki mumbled, staring at her with glossy eyes. Was he… all right…? “The King does not want you on his star. The King thinks you are the very worst person he has ever met! The King wants you to leave! The King wants you to leave!” He was, obviously, NOT okay.

“Ah… Kazuaki Nanaki. The other one of Hitori’s lovers that he heartlessly murdered,” She grinned, leaning forward on the stand, “How do I know that? Well I clearly didn’t get a planisphere, considering how much I wanted to see Hitori become a mass murderer, but because I spent so much time watching him when I was alive, I got the wonderful privilege of watching him after I died, too! Boy, was that an adventure.”

“Disgusting petty worthless voyeurs are not welcome on Holiday Star. The King says that Ueda is banished,” Kazuaki responded harshly, “Hitori belongs to The King. Not Ueda. She should go.”

“Oh, possessive, aren’t we?” Ayano continued to tease, “Why do you even want him? He murdered you. I found it an honor to be killed by Hitori Uzune, but you are nothing like me. Hm, I guess Uzune has a type after all. He likes blondes. Blonde, useless crybabies.”

“The King is not a crybaby! And The King loves Hitori! The King would have died by now anyway, and life was not very nice. The only thing that made The King sad about dying was being alone for so long! If The King has Hitori, it doesn’t matter. The King doesn’t care if Hitori hurt a lot of people. The King doesn’t care if Hitori killed him too. That is not all Hitori is. He’s shown his regret. That is enough for The King to pardon him.”

“Yeah, you see, that’s the difference between you and me, Kazuaki. You want to pardon him for his misdeeds, but I love him for them. And you know, that’s really who he is. He’s absolutely rotten. Always has been, always will be.”

“The King says Ueda is a liar.”

“Ayano says The Kings are both liars, so who are you to talk?”

“Enough of this,” Nageki said, standing up, having recovered much more quickly this time. Probably because he was already overloaded, so this was just adding onto the long-term effects at this point.

“I agree,” The administrator noted, “We should dispose of his body.”

“No!” Resounded from all three other speaking parties.

“The King says that Hitori will never leave him again!” Kazuaki shouted, crying through his hands.

“Well,” Ayano explained herself sweetly, “A husk like that, I could do whatever I wanted to him… and I wouldn’t even have to worry about waking him up anymore!”

“The King asks what that’s supposed to mean,” Kazuaki’s voice dropped into a frightening tone, bubbling with a particularly harsh anger at the idea of what she’d just said.

“Oh, nothing!” She smiled in an innocent fashion.

“...Listen,” Nageki started, “I hate you a lot right now. I never even met you when you were alive, but… you were the only person I knew for certain that Hitori had killed, and I really don’t blame him for it. You keep saying that it’s his true nature, to hurt people, but… I’ve known him almost my entire life. I think that just isn’t true. He’s more like… a sponge. He absorbs what people throw at him, but eventually that starts leaking back out. He’s a good person, though. If not for you… he would have never done any of the awful things he did. It’s your fault that he’s like this now.”

“What is this anyway? The King is worried,” Kazuaki whined.

“The administrator is being useless, so I sort of checked his brain,” Nageki admitted, but then fell sullen, “This is… a strange incident. There’s a process called magical erasure. It’s a form of erasure that leaves behind the memory of a person. Sometimes, people who have the capability of magical erasure… will attempt to erase themselves. And this is the result. The only known solution is to physically erase the afflicted person, but… we won’t do that. That there… that’s still Hitori. Broken. But still Hitori. So I intend to keep him around. I won’t let him be erased. I won’t let Ueda take him, either.”

“God, you’re so annoying!” Ayano shouted, dragging her hands down her face, “I’ll erase you! And I-I’ll erase Kazuaki too, I’ll erase anybody I have to, for Hitori!” She jumped off the stand and approached Nageki-

The moment she touched him, however, she fell to pieces. No, she didn’t start crying, or apologize. She fell to pieces in a very literal sense. Torn apart by some unknown force, then the pieces all disappeared, and it was clear what had just happened.

Ayano Ueda had been erased. Magically erased, by the one being in the room who was capable of it. He was gone. Long gone. But he would continue to do everything he could to protect the people he cared about. He had been broken down to his essence, and his essence was protection.

“He… no, this isn’t right at all! He shouldn’t have been able to do something like that, inside of the projection…” The administrator shouted, running around franctically. A closer look at Hitori revealed his eyes were completely made of that strange static now, and the way he stood was limp and lifeless. There was a darkness pulsing around his feet, which suddenly stretched to cover the whole projection in darkness before dissolving it completely. They were not standing in the same place they had been when the projection went up. Rather, the walls were darker. Chipped. Far less beautiful, and Kazuaki immediately recognized it as the only room in the castle he’d entered just once. The dungeon.

The administrator backed up against one of those walls, cowering as he pulled out some sort of walkie-talkie looking thing, “I, uh, I have a big problem, and I need backup, there’s a-” He was cut off suddenly as Hitori took one step closer, robes that once seemed so lackluster now full of life in comparison with the one who wore them, and the representative met with the very same fate as Ayano Ueda.

Hitori turned to face everyone else who was standing there. The entirety of the light court, no more, no less. Anghel and Yuuya were absent, and the rest of the witnesses were nowhere in sight either. Hitori’s eyes seemed to flash with some sort of annoyance, and he finally spoke again, though his voice was raspy, weak, and strained, “Get out.”

“Hitori-” Nageki started, but Kazuaki put a hand on his shoulder and shook his head, tears streaming a particularly huge amount.

“The… The King thinks it is best… if Hitori is left alone…” He struggled to say this through his bawling, but it was enough to get Nageki to nod and walk to the stairs. The rest of the light court followed silently. Even just the way Kazuaki was talking… served as proof enough that Hitori was beyond them currently. Once they were back in the main part of the castle, Kazuaki walked over to a door that none of his court could ever say they’d seen before.

“Isn’t… isn’t that door usually a picture of a rose?” Hiyoko asked, quietly, still shaken from recent events.

“The King says goodbye,” Kazuaki whispered as he opened the door and stepped inside. Ryouta rushed forward, but by the time he got there the door was a painting again. Sakuya attempted to teleport beyond the door, but found himself unable to do it, as if the area beyond just didn’t exist.

“He’s… not here,” Nageki said simply, then started laughing. It was some sort of hysteria of course, because this wasn’t funny at all, “We’ve… lost both of our kings. They’re both gone. I’m...I don’t think we’ll be getting them back,” He was grinning, but there were tears in his eyes now, “Some paradise this is.”


	53. Chapter 53

It was about time for a particular person to arrive on Holiday Star.

Time for somebody who had heard stories, long ago, of a glimmering and wonderful place, to finally find himself there. He had, through some dumb luck, never had a dream of this place, but through all his life he’d kept it in mind, even into his senile days; though, those seemed to have now been reversed, as he found his skin once more smooth and his actions once more youthful. He found himself at an age which he would most like to be; and it seemed that age was nineteen.

“Conductor?” He asked, smiling as sweetly as he could, “If it’s not too much trouble, do you think that you could possibly take me to Holiday Star?”

“Holiday… Star? Oh no. You don’t want to go there. It’s a rotten place, these days. Plus, it’s been said that the moment certain people step off of the train, they’re erased from existence. We avoid stopping there as much as possible nowadays. A shame… it used to be a nice place. You must have heard about it, when it was still…” The conductor sighed, “But you do have a Planisphere, so if you still want to go, I can’t deny you that.”

“Well… You’re right, I heard it was a lovely place, but I still want to go. There’s somebody that I’m going to meet there,” He said softly, turning his planisphere over in his hands.

“I’d be a bit more careful with that, if I were you. If you give it to somebody who doesn’t deserve it, then it’ll disappear. And… if it gets stolen,” The conductor sighed, shaking his head, “Just hold onto it, okay? Be careful.”

“I will,” He nodded and put the planisphere back into his pocket.

“Say, child?” Somebody spoke, and he looked back up to see that somebody had approached and sat down in the seat across from him without asking or anything, “Did you say that you’re going to Holiday Star? Well, last time I was there it was nice, and the people there were especially kind. I’m sure that if you’re going to meet somebody there, they’ll be one of the best people you ever see… My son lives there, and he grew up to be a fine person.”

“Ah… see, I was adopted. My father died in an accident a few months before I was born, then my mom died in childbirth. My adoptive parents told me that after I die, I’ll get to see them again if I ask for Holiday Star, and my birth parents too…” He explained sheepishly, crossing his legs and sliding his hands between his knees.

“Wow! Your birth parents sound like they were very unfortunate people!” The man noted, then leaned back and stroked his chin, “Then again, if I think about it… Everyone living on that star seemed to be unfortunate. They had that vibe about them, at least when I visited… that their lives had been something far from perfect. Anyone can go there, but I feel like the only people who stay are the people who were lost when they were alive…”

“What do you mean by that?”

“It’s… I suppose I’m trying to say that it’s a beacon, of sorts. It’s a place for people who don’t belong anywhere else,” He nodded, resolved with that explanation, “If I was to ever stop wandering, I think that I would go there. Yeah… that’d be nice.”

“Even if the conductor was right, and it’s not a nice place anymore?” 

“Just because a place is gloomy and people disappear sometimes doesn’t mean it’s not a nice place! I bet The Kings are just in a bad mood,” He smiled, “Most stars that I’ve been to seem to be very intrinsically linked with the mental state of their rulers, after all. If it really is in such a gloomy state, that just means we need to cheer up the monarchy!”

“You’re very optimistic…”

“Well, I’ve been dead a long time and seen a lot of things, kid! Somebody like me has either gotta be optimistic or pessimistic by now, and I decided to take the high road!” He chuckled, then leaned forward, hands on his knees, “So what’s your name, anyway? Mine’s Ryuuji.”

“Ryouta.”

“Ryouta, eh? That’s a nice name. So nice that I named my kid Ryouta, too!”

“Aunt Azami always told me that my parents had my name picked out a long time before I was born. She said that they named me after somebody very special to them, who’d died years before…” He shrugged, looking up as the train came to a stop, “Oh, are we here?”

-  
Hiyoko Tosaka was sick of the rain. It had been raining, downpouring even, ever since that day when the kings both locked themselves in opposite parts of the castle. She could see from the outside, the tower that The King had gone into, but it seemed there was no way into it. Sakuya couldn’t teleport in, and when she tried to climb it she kept mysteriously finding herself standing at the bottom again.

It got to a point where she was so tired of being soaked that she decided it was time to take more extreme measures. If she couldn’t approach her own king, then she’d have to go to the other one… and, well, the rain wasn’t her only motivation either. She hadn’t seen Yuuya or Anghel since that day either, and while she had looked for them (everyone had) she hadn’t actually thought to go and ask The Dark King about his court… she didn’t want to see him. She’d hoped that they could track down everyone who was missing on their own, but it seemed now as if everyone who’d been a witness or left the trial midway through had disappeared completely. She wondered, if he had erased them… but he wouldn’t do something like that, right?

And if she went to speak with him… he wouldn’t erase her. Even as she thought this, however, she was filled with fear. She didn’t know anymore, what Mr. Uzune might do. She’d seen into his past, she’d had her distrust of him from the very beginning, confirmed. The prospect of going to talk to him now, especially given the fact that last time she’d seen him, he’d erased two different people without lifting a finger… if she upset him at all, she could possibly consider herself a goner.

Yet, she had to do it. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door into the dungeon and made her way down the stairs, only to see somebody sitting on the floor, and… the room looked much different from the last time she’d been there. The floor itself looked quite a bit like a clock, actually. She locked eyes with the girl sitting there, who stood up slowly. She didn’t recognize her, “Who… are you?”

“My name is Kokoro,” The girl said quietly.

“Oh, you were one of the kids in Hitori’s flashback!” Hiyoko made the connection, taking another step down the stairs, “You seemed nice. What are you doing here?”

“I’m here because I’m not supposed to let you into the dungeon. Or anybody, really. The King doesn’t want to see anyone,” She smiled a bit, “Ah, but… I’m not very good at my job. I might let you through after all, if you do something for me.”

“What do you need me to do?” Hiyoko asked, stepping forward again.

“There is a man in a cell on the wall. Every night while the violet rose is awake, he takes the man and he beats him up with a smile on his face. I enjoy seeing that man injured, of course… but I do not think it is good for the violet rose…” She sighed, “That’s what the clock tells me, anyway. I do as it says, because it is the only clock here that matters anymore. Centuries pass, meaning nothing to the dead… but this clock speaks wisdom. I need you to release that man.”

“Why do you think I can do it, and you can’t?” Hiyoko questioned.

“His cell isn’t difficult to open, from the outside, but… my hands can’t do it. I can’t touch the bars,” She stepped forward and reached out to touch Hiyoko’s arm, only for her fingers to go right through, “See, I was erased… The King brought me back, though, because I was supposed to be here… He’s a very good king, you know. Better than yours. Your king is just hiding out by himself, but here is my king… going to such lengths as bringing someone back into his existence… he always did care so much about all of us.”

“How… how do you know what my king is doing?” Hiyoko questioned, stepping forward with her fist clenched and teeth gritted.

“The clock tells me everything, Tosaka,” She smiled softly as she twirled around, the numbers on the floor seeming to glow, “You want to speak with my king, don’t you? You want to see them again… the violet rose, and the fallen angel… release that man, and I will let you,” Her voice echoed and was like honey while she stood on her toes, legs clad in dark purple tights, the only one Hiyoko had seen to have a shorter skirt on Holiday Star. She was clearly a member of the dark court, even in her strange state of hardly existing.

Hiyoko only nodded as she stepped towards the cell. She couldn’t see inside of it, but even so, she hesitated with her hand on the handle, “Why, exactly, did you enjoy seeing Yuuya beat him up? Why was Yuuya beating him up in the first place?”

“The violet rose is broken. As for me, well… the man in there, he is the person who erased me. It hurt a lot, but… I want you to let him go anyway.”

Hiyoko only nodded a bit, tightening her grip on the handle before pulling it open. Somebody who was covered in scars, most prominently a circular one in the center of his forehead, tumbled out, only to scramble to his feet and immediately make a run for the stairs. Hiyoko was too in shock, seeing who he was, to even process it quickly enough to stop him from exiting the dungeon. She’d recognize that scar anywhere, even in the case that she somehow didn’t remember the owner of it, “...Bishikikouji…!?”


	54. Chapter 54

“Mmmhmm,” Kokoro nodded, suddenly standing right behind Hiyoko, “Tohri Nishikikouji. A criminal so notorious that conductors do all that they can to avoid allowing people onto trains with him, even going so far as forcing people to relive their dying moments for hours until the next train arrives… after all, that’s better than being made into a gruesome artistic subject…”

“Why… why did you…” Hiyoko stammered, starting to run back towards the stairs only to find a wall had erected itself where the stairway once was.

“I told you. I listen to the clock. Ah, but the truth is… that I didn’t tell the truth. You should know that by now, Tosaka. Every member of the dark court is a filthy liar. We will all betray you. You can’t trust us,” In the literal blink of an eye, Hiyoko found herself standing in the center of the clock, “The violet rose will be no better off, if he doesn’t torment that man. Really, in this place, that was the only thing that brought genuinity to his smile…”

“Let me see Yuuya and Anghel! Let me talk to Uzune!” Hiyoko protested, going to step off the clock’s center, only to withdraw her foot immediately when the hands started turning far too quickly, and… in the wrong direction…

“The King does so much for all of us! He really does! Even now when we are at our worst, he lets us stay with him, he doesn’t punish us!” Kokoro had a very slight, but also very unnerving smile on her face as she jumped off the clock’s center, standing on the end of one of the hands as it spun with grace that Hiyoko just couldn’t muster, “Oh, but… we are all monsters. So we can’t go outside. The King says that people who might hurt someone… have to stay inside. Himself most of all! But, the clock tells me of a different future we could reach…”

“Even now, Tosaka,” Kokoro continued, pointing at her, “As we speak, Nageki Fujishiro is trying to turn back the clock. He’s going to go back, back to when he arrived here… but we won’t remember a thing. History will repeat itself. We’ll end up here again… The Dark Court cannot be allowed to exist, or if it must, we simply cannot /try/ to be good people. So there’s two choices.”

“Choice number one. Erase us all. You could do it, you know. It’s not actually very hard. You don’t /need/ to tear us to pieces. Just chop off all our heads and throw them out into the emptiness of space… we’ll fade right away. That sword that you wear for the aesthetic, it really could function. You could, Tosaka. You could. I would let you, and I’m certain everybody else would too…” She jumped forward again, back onto the center platform, standing in the same spot as Hiyoko in her own incorporeality, an unsettling feeling.

“I’m not going to do that. I don’t want to erase anybody,” Hiyoko frowned, trying to step away and only falling facefirst onto the clock, which stopped turning as she landed.

“Of course not. You’re a good person. You have a planisphere. Do you know what those do? They hold your essence. Your being. People without planispheres… will eventually deteriorate into their most base forms. That’s what awaits you. The violet rose, the crimson angel, and The King, they’re only that now. Not the friends you knew at all. We’re all truly horrible now,” She stepped over, stopping with her shoes only inches from Hiyoko’s face.

“It would be best for you, to erase us all, and you wouldn’t remember us afterwards anyhow…” Kokoro frowned, crossing her arms, “But there is option number two, which really sucks for you.”

“What’s option number two…?”

“Well, when it comes down to it, option number one is you erase me over again, go stop Nishikikouji, then come back and erase the rest of them. Option number two, you can go talk to your friends again, and Nishikikouji will go to the library. He’ll interfere with Nageki’s attempt to fix everything, and everything will be altered. The past, the present, and the future, will all mold to match his intentions. A world where he gets what he wants… but also, one where the dark court is superior. I don’t think I’d mind it much. All that power, and… only one person needs to get hurt more…”

“I don’t want to do anything that’s going to hurt anyone more,” Hiyoko frowned, getting back to her feet.

“He would have been a member of the dark court, if he hadn’t been so hated by its other members… So, if he gets ahold of the storybooks, the world will reset to a place where my court is in control… ah, but his intentions are… to make the fallen angel belong to him. And, well, the light court’s going to be a bit less splendid, but really, it would be better for us. Don’t you want to help your friends? Don’t you want your king back? Don’t you want to fix this broken world?”

“I…” Hiyoko hesitated, taking a step backwards, “I don’t want to let Anghel go through that…”

“TOSAKA!” Kokoro shouted, suddenly seeming very terrifying, “You’re the one who decided to come down here, knowing the state of my king right now. You have to be prepared to make difficult decisions like this! I can’t do anything! I just want to see my king happy… but that’s not the best thing to do. He doesn’t want to exist anymore, Tosaka,” The fury faded and she just looked very upset, staring at the ground and tearing up, “My big brother… has fallen into so much despair that he tried to erase himself from existence. So the choice is yours. Fulfill his wish, or let a world come about where he can be happy again…” Two doors appeared, “Through one door is the stairs. The other, one of your friends. Stop Nishikikouji, then erase us from this world… or go and speak to your friends one more time before everything changes.”

“You already know my answer.”

“...So I do. Go on then. The violet rose is just through that door.”


	55. Chapter 55

“Ah! Auntie Azami!” The Ryouta who was not Ryouta Kawara grinned as he got off of the train, immediately spotting the woman who hqd raised him and running up to her, hugging her before stepping back a bit with a quizzical look, “But… Didn’t you say that you weren’t going to be at the train station, probably?”

“Ryouta!” She sounded overjoyed, beaming at him, “Thank goodness you got off the train all right… Well, I’m taking over for Fujishiro for a little while is all! He apparently had an idea for something he could do to fix this whole mess,” She gestured at the downpouring and dismal world beyond the train station, “And he was also tired of seeing people get erased left right and center, but that’s not important! How have you been?”

“Mostly good! I missed you, though. I ended up getting pretty old, and life was cool, but I’m glad to see you again!” He was enthusiastic, though that faded a bit as he processed what she said and looked out on the world, “But… This place isn’t really anything like how you described it to me…”

“It’s not anymore. There was a bit of a… Civil dispute, within the monarchy. Both kings of this star have gone missing, but they clearly still exist… The rain and the aggression towards would-be visitors proves that, at the very least, The Dark King is still doing… Something,” Azami sighed, trying to explain, “Ah, in any case! I’ll call everyone who should meet you, to come down here and say hello. Blaster too. You… don’t have to stick around, if you’d rather go somewhere less gloomy, but there are some people who would really want to see you.”

“I’ll stay,” Ryouta Jr. shrugged, crossing his arms, “If everyone I know is here, well, what reason would I have to go anywhere else?”

“Ah… even after Blaster and I died, you were still just as much of a loner…?” Azami questioned, sounding disappointed, but in that motherly sort of way showing that she only wanted him to be happy.

“Yeah. I had a few friends but nobody really close enough to be worth spending eternity around, you know? I’d much rather see you and Uncle Rabu again, and… meet my parents, too. They are here, right?”

“Of course. I’ll call them right now,” Azami nodded, smiling softly.

-

“Hi...yo...ko…” The voice which spoke her name when she closed the door behind herself was gutteral and weak, but unmistakably belonged to Yuuya Sakazaki. She took one more step forward and saw him sitting on a folding chair, hands cuffed to the sides of it and hair falling down in his face, hiding every bit of it except the grin which split his cheeks and didn’t seem to move an inch when he spoke again, “What are you doing here…?”

“Yuuya!” She shouted softly, running forward now and crouching next to him, touching his wrists where they were cuffed to the chair, “What’s going on!? Did Uzune do this to you??”

“Not at all, dear…” He shook his head, his tone light and cheery, but strained nonetheless. His mouth continued not to move, “My king… he is a very, very good king. He lets me out of here, every night, and I go upstairs… I drag Nishikikouji down here, and I hit him until I’m covered in his blood… I bring him back upstairs, then sit down in this chair and cuff myself to it.”

“Why would you do that!? Don’t feel bad about hurting Bishikikouji! He deserves it, after what he did to you-” She tried to console him, but he snapped at her.

“No! You don’t even know the half of it, Hiyoko! You don’t know everything he did… you don’t know why he did what he did… and you don’t know the least bit about what I did,” His voice broke into a laugh which didn’t sound quite right at all, “I’m… I’m just serving my time…”

“You’re right… I don’t. I don’t know why you didn’t get a planisphere, I don’t know why you’re subservient to Uzune… I don’t understand any of this. You and Anghel both… you always seemed like such good people. It doesn’t make sense to me,” She said quietly, standing up and clenching her fists as she looked down at Yuuya for possibly the first time ever. She wasn’t exactly short, but he was tall as hell, “But… it doesn’t have to. Yuuya, if I remember correctly… you always said, when asked what you did, that you feel guilt and remorse, but no regret. You always accepted before, that it was in the past, and that you couldn’t change the past. You don’t even have to tell me what happened… just remember…”

“Hiyoko,” He mumbled, then tilted his head up towards her, still with that unmoving smile, “Please don’t say such things about my king, okay? He’s just like me. Just like Anghel. Objectively horrible, in the grand scheme of things… and yet… he always seemed so nice when he was alive… and he’s always been perfectly kind, even now…”

“How can you say that, Yuuya? After everything that happened. After what he did… you didn’t even see it, did you?” She questioned, leaning closer to his face.

“Fujishiro’s understanding reached Anghel and me despite our being outside of the projection. Perhaps… because of how intrinsically linked we are to our king…” He shrugged, “As for that whole erasure thing, well… that’s nothing to be bothered by. And,” Now tilting his head to the side, “How can you condemn him like this when he’s the only thing, even now, keeping you and the people you love… safe…”

“...Huh?” Hiyoko questioned, taking a step back and standing up straight, “What do you mean? We’re all in worse shape now than we’ve ever been on Holiday Star. Well… excluding, maybe… That time.”

“He’s keeping you all safe… by keeping monsters like me away from you…” Yuuya whispered, and the handcuffs fell away, leaving him to clutch his hands to his chest, “And…” As he said this, Hiyoko stepped forward and touched his face on either side of the smile, pulling away the mask to reveal that behind it, he was crying, and his eyes… except for that one hole in his left eye, that scar, they looked exactly like The Dark King’s eyes had last time Hiyoko had seen him.

“Yuuya, you…” She stepped further back, dropping the mask on the ground and watching it shatter into pieces before looking back up and locking eyes with her friend.

“Enough about me. Even if my king didn’t have to keep us down here to protect you… he’s still doing it. Protecting you. Protecting all of you. The administration has declared war on this star, you know. It’s not very publicized, but it’s there. They keep sending soldiers… and my king keeps destroying those soldiers the moment they try to set foot on this star,” Yuuya explained, covering his face with his hands only for Hiyoko to take them and hold them, forcing their eyes to meet again. She smiled softly.

“That’s… that’s fine, Yuuya, what’s important to me right now is you. You… tried to erase yourself too, didn’t you? Uzune’s sickness spread to you, and you…” Her breath caught in her throat, “But you’re still so… human… Yuuya, you’re so strong…”

“Uzune’s sickness… heh. That’s certainly some way to put it. It’s more of… a fog. It doesn’t do anything on its own, but it just… makes you more aware of the things you’ve done wrong. I can’t blame anyone else…” He shook his head, “Ahah… at this rate, I’m going to be just like him soon enough. A shadow of my former self. I can already feel it slipping away, everything that I’ve learned over time. My king is nearly a husk, and soon I will be too, broken down to something hardly even functional…”

“Well,” She turned her head, placing a hand on his cheek, “Not so long. Kokoro said something about Nageki trying to fix this all… and I trust him. She also said something about messing it up, but I think that she underestimated him. Everything’s going to turn out all right. We’ll go back to the beginning, and maybe things will turn out differently, and… we’ll forget this ever happened. You’ll be okay.”

“I don’t deserve a second chance, Hiyoko,” Yuuya sighed, and she could tell by the movement of the scar that he’d averted his eyes, though the rest of them had nothing to distinguish the iris, pupil, or sclera from each other, “I never knew I had the power to erase myself. If I did, I’d have done it sooner…” A slow blink, “I… would have liked for Nishikikouji to have succeeded in destroying me back then. I’d rather be gone. Not remembered at all… than this. All I did was make myself empty, but then…” He laughed loudly, and suddenly, “Haven’t I been empty this entire time!?”

“...Not at all,” Hiyoko responded, and there was suddenly a peculiar wiseness behind her eyes, something which would hardly be expected of the barbarian type that she fell into. A wiseness which… Had before been seen in Ryouta by Sakuya, and in Sakuya by Hiyoko, on various different but rare occasions. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her Planisphere, which was glowing softly, and held it out. Rather than its usual directional pull, the needle instead seemed to point right at Yuuya, “Somebody once told me… That a soul shines as bright as any star…”

“This… can’t be right…” Yuuya shook his head, “I haven’t got a soul. Not anymore.”

Hiyoko just smiled at him, closing her eyes and shaking her head again, “That’s the thing. You never erased yourself at all… only Uzune could have the power to do something like that. That’s why you’re still so… real.”

“If I didn’t erase myself… then why are my eyes like this…” He muttered, grabbing Hiyoko’s wrists tighly but being careful not to touch her planisphere, “Why do I feel this way…?”

“That’s because…” She whispered, putting the compass-like object away then pressing her hands against her friend’s chest, “The eyes, that’s just because your king no longer really exists, but the way that you feel… haven’t you felt this way all along?” She moved away, then scooped up the fragments of the mask off the ground and holding them out to him, “This is proof enough for me… that you’ve been faking. For how long, Yuuya? Was it the whole time I knew you? Was it your whole life, and afterlife too? Of course you’d feel this way…” She paused, “Think of an apple. Imagine if somebody covered the apple in wax and kept it shiny, but the inside of the apple was slowly going rotten…”

“I…” He hesitated, then dipped his head as he sunk to the ground, the folding chair collapsing slowly beneath him, “Hiyoko, I want you to know, that I…” He hesitated for a second, “I killed Shuu Iwamine. Tohri Nishikikouji too. It was… it was for Anghel. I don’t want to go into details, but I… I’m sorry,” He shook his head, “I don’t want you to be afraid of me. I really don’t. Even now, when I’m like this… I swear, I’d never hurt you, or any other member of your court…”

“I know, Yuuya,” She paused as well, rubbing the back of her neck and looking up at the stained glass ceiling, made in shades of black and purple with the occasional red accent, “I know,” The way she said that made it clear, all that she wanted him to know. She didn’t know what he’d done, but nothing that could have gotten him his lack of a planisphere could make her take the trust she had put in him back. He was the brother of one who she loved with all her heart, and more importantly, one of her best friends. She could never distrust him like she did the king that he served, even if he had hurt everyone by disappearing like that. She understood why he needed to, now, with this new knowledge… and she could never be afraid of him.

She was a brave hunter-gatherer, after all.


	56. Chapter 56

“Ah… that was Azami,” Sakuya spoke as he put his iPhone, rose gold, 6s plus, 64 gigabyte (what? even in death he demanded only the best things he could afford, and well, anyone could afford a memory) back into his pocket, turning to lock eyes with Ryouta, “She said that we should come immediately… she couldn’t get ahold of Hiyoko, but we should go regardless… but, Nageki, will you be all right on your own?”

“Both of us? And Hiyoko?” Ryouta asked, furrowing his brow, “You don’t think-”

“Yes, yes… it would certainly be him,” Sakuya responded quickly.

“Well, I don’t know what you two are talking about, but…” Nageki shrugged, “It’s just a few finishing touches, anyway. A little more magic and we should be go. It’s not like anybody’s going to interrupt and screw up the process, so you may as well go… it might end up being your only chance, ever.”

“That’s right… do we even want to, Sakuya?” Ryouta asked, looking up at him with a frown, “It’ll just make it that much more of a shame that…”

“This world is ending,” Nageki said simply, casually, delivering the worst of news with the same lack of formality as ever, “Yes, that’s what’s happening. We’re destroying this universe to create another, with hopefully a better outcome… of course, it will be possible to regain our memories. The light court, anyway. So I suppose if you have the chance to make one more good memory to unlock someday, you should take it.”

“Are you sure you can handle the rest yourself?” Ryouta voiced one last concern, this time to Nageki.

“Of course I can. The King set this all up ahead of time… he just didn’t count on being out of the picture when it needed to be used. You and Sakuya have contributed plenty of magic, I can definitely do the rest myself. You have… an hour, I’d say. Then, we’re going back. Kazuaki and I will spend all that time waiting for Hitori again… you two and Hiyoko will arrive respectively… Sakazaki and Higure…” Nageki spoke softly, “I… don’t want to repeat all this. I’m going to try and… retain my memories, from the very start. To make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

“None of us want to live through those things again…” Sakuya muttered, turning away. He had never spoken of it to anybody, but the minute Hiyoko arrived on Holiday Star he knew exactly how she’d died. It was the timeframe, after all. That, with the knowledge that there could have been complications, informed of on the day that he’d died… it was obvious and heartwrenching, that she’d lost her life when bringing it to another.

“Nageki… are you sure that this is how it’ll work?”

“No, actually. I don’t really know much at all, my only explanation was given to me in Kingspeak,” He shrugged, “But… whatever does end up happening, it would be better than this,” He locked eyes with the both of them simultaneously somehow, staring right through them, “I… just want my big brother back. What we saw back there wasn’t Hitori. That was just a monster made to look like him.”

-

“Edel Blau!” The calling of her name made Hiyoko almost certain, as she opened the next door after a long flight of stairs deeper into the dungeon (where she was completely lacking in cell service) that Anghel was in better shape than Yuuya. These hopes disguised as certainties, however, were completely shattered as torches- yes, torches- around the room lit up with a dark purple flame and she saw that the person who called her name looked an awful lot like Anghel… but certainly wasn’t him. This person had black hair and eyes unclouded, as well as a much more feminine, much more revealing outfit than she’d ever expect Anghel to be comfortable wearing.

“...Anghel?” She questioned, not really believing this to be him, but put off by the similarity in appearance that this mystery had to her friend.

“What a fool name. A fool name for a fool, foolish person…” The voice seemed to echo, “The Crimson Angel of Judecca! What a joke! He should have known that you simply can’t hope to imprison a demon within your own body…”

“You’re…” Hiyoko hesitated, grasping for the name as she drew her sword, pointing it out in front of her. She regretted now more than ever, not spending as much time with Anghel since her arrival on the star. She’d been nearly middle-aged by the time she died, and it was much harder to put up with Anghelisms once mature… but that was no excuse for abandoning her friend, and she couldn’t let the consequences hurt him even more now, “Black Beandonna.”

“Ahhh, yes! So you do recognize me, Edel Blau! It was I who you imprisoned in the eternal cage of ice oh so long ago… I who puppeteered the Crimson Angel to my will!” She was grinning now as she stepped towards Hiyoko fearlessly, “Ah, but in layman’s terms, I guess you could call me something else. Black Beandonna… well, that’s what he always called a certain idea. Yoshiko Akagi… That’s not him at all, but me. Something to be despised. Avoided. I am the spirit of any fear, any doubt, any misery brought from the thought that he was not a man.”

“All the more reason that I should run you through!” Hiyoko shouted, jumping to the side and waving her sword around… she wore it for uniform purposes, but she wasn’t exactly skilled in its usage. She could really use help from Sakuya right about now, and she didn’t want to lower the sword for the time it would take to pull out a gun. She just had to go and fit herself into the theme of high fantasy drama…

“Killing me would only help for so long, anyway… I won’t fight you, Edel Blau, because any outcome would be useless. As an apparition, I can’t erase you, and if you kill me, I’ll just come back the next time somebody says something rude to him…” She shrugged, then grinned, “Ah, besides… as long as The Angel and I are separate, he’s got no reason to feel any less himself. Really, it’s better for him that I’ve been projected out of his being…”

“Where is he, then!?” Hiyoko questioned, stepping forward and snarling.

“Right there,” Beandonna gestured to the center of the room, then disappeared. Lying there was Anghel Higure, or at the very least, what remained of him. He was very much not in a good way… which was an understatement. He was dressed again in his school uniform rather than his dark court outfit, but the bandages which usually accompanied that attire were strewn about on the ground beneath him, and his bare arms were covered in cuts that didn’t seem to stop bleeding. Hiyoko ran forward and knelt next to him.

“Oh… Hiyoko…” He mumbled quietly, and any hopes she had for him being in good spirits were effectively dashed in full, and she could feel tears brimming in her eyes as she leaned over, starting to wrap the bandages back around his arms, only to have him grab her wrist and look at her, as wild-eyed as could get with that broken cloudiness which seemed to impact him as well, “No! No. No…”

“Why not? Anghel, if I put these bandages back on, you’ll feel better. Come on…” She whispered and he sat up, clutching his arms to his chest and leaving the bandages where they were, practically scampering away from her and grimacing, “Anghel. What’s your damage? Let me fix you up…”

“Don’t. Talk,” He hissed, squeezing his eyes shut, “I don’t need fixing. I don’t need to be fixed. I feel fine. I don’t need… to feel better…” He trailed off, collapsing again and coughing a few times, “B-Besides… if the bandages are on… then they come…”

“Who?” Hiyoko questioned, picking up the bandages and approaching him, starting to tie them on regardless. He cringed as she did.

“See for yourself…” He grumbled, turning away. Hiyoko looked up as she continued wrapping the bandages, then promptly dropped all the others she’d gathered up when she saw what he was talking about. They were very unreal, very clearly figments of his imagination, but in a place like this those figments could be real and dangerous. They approached with hot breath and something about their approach felt not as if she was about to be maimed, but as if she was about to meet with some fate which would hurt her to her very core rather than the more plausible idea that she would just be torn to bits. This was a particularly pronounced fear that she’d never experienced before, and just looking at the way Anghel shook told her that he had, and she wondered even more just what had happened.

Ah, but the monsters, they were the big issue at the moment. Rather than unravel the bandages, as would make sense to do, she took to shouting, “Help! Somebody, somebody please come help me! Help me and Anghel!”

Somebody came.  
But, when she saw who it was, she would have rathered nobody did.


	57. Chapter 57

The monsters were immediately dispelled as somebody stepped forward. The man who wore the crown was barely any taller than Hiyoko, but at this moment, that single inch may as well have been several feet, even after she stood up. Anghel stayed where he was, staring up at his king, who didn’t say a word at all as he knelt down and pulled bandages out of… somewhere, and discarded the old ones for these new ones which didn’t seem to carry the same curse. Once Anghel was gratefully sorted out, The King whispered to him, “If I had known you needed my help, I’d have come sooner.”

“I know…” Anghel responded, crossing his arms and sighing as Uzune turned back around, looking down at Hiyoko from the very small distance between their heights.

“Tosaka. What are you doing here?” He questioned, and his robes seemed to disappear; not leaving him naked, of course not, but rather, leaving him standing in one of the outfits which was typical when he was a teacher, oh so long ago, “The bell rang twenty minutes ago…” His voice was distant and strange as he took hold of her shoulder and led her through a door into another room, which… resembled a classroom, actually. There was nobody there.

“I… think you’re mistaken, Mister Uzune…” Hiyoko’s voice shook as she addressed him; as fearless as she was, the threat of being erased at any misstep was enough to make even the bravest hunter-gatherers quake in their boots, “There’s no school today… nobody’s here.”

“I’m… mistaken?” He questioned, tilting his head at an unnatural angle, then nodding slowly, “Ah, that’s right… I went to prison. I couldn’t teach then, after all. And I… died. Yes, that’s right, we’re dead, the both of us, Miss Tosaka.”

“That’s right,” She nodded as well, the fear starting to fade as she saw the confusion in his face.

“You don’t like me, Tosaka, do you? Did you ever like my classes? Did you ever like me?” He slowly sat down on one of the desks, the robes but not the outfit coming back, cloak draped over clothing from when he was alive as he shrunk down as much as a person could physically shrink, then a bit more.

“I did like you. You were a good teacher. You were nice. But… I wasn’t surprised, when I heard that you were a murderer,” She stepped forward, venturing as far as to put a hand on his shouldler, “I wouldn’t say I never liked you. I’d say that I never trusted you.”

“You were always such a smart girl, Tosaka…” He nodded, feathers from his collar dropping off and falling to the ground. His speech started to sound like somebody had broken into the audio files of a game and inserted something that shouldn’t have been there, disrupting the sound throughout, “I wouldn’t trust me either. I can’t even do a simple task like stop existing, or not killing people…”

“Uzune…” She muttered, but was cut off as he grabbed her hand, pulling her closer to him with a jerky motion, reaching into her pocket and retrieving her planisphere, wordlessly. She could do nothing but stare as he seemed to flicker strangely, but then pulled a knife from… somewhere, and stabbed it through the face of the planisphere before handing it back to her. As soon as her hands closed around it again, she felt a shooting pain in her chest, and a wealth of knowledge that seemed to have no source whatsover. She stared at him for a good few seconds as the pain led her to tears before shouting, fearful and betrayed, “What did you DO to me!?”

The Dark King seemed mostly faceless, now, except for a crooked grin.

Hiyoko blinked, and when she opened her eyes she was standing in the train station, still clutching her chest in pain and panic. She stumbled forward, only to have her shoulder grabbed by a familiar hand. Azami. She turned to look at her, only to also see Blaster and her own two lovers, as well as… “A-Azami? Is that?”

“Ryouta the second, at your service!” The child in question saluted, “Hi Mom!”

Hiyoko just stared in shock, nodded, then turned back to the adults, “This might be horrible timing, but there’s a few things I need to say. Sakuya, can you… can you come aside, with me?” He nodded, then stood off with her while she had a deathgrip on his arm, the others completely out of earshot, “I know why Yuuya left.”

“What!?” Sakuya questioned, taken aback, “How in the world could you find that out!? If he wouldn’t even tell me to keep me from hating him, I don’t understand why he would-”

“He didn’t. Well, I mean, he told me part of it, but just because I happened to see him and tell him that the world’s ending-”

“I know I didn’t tell, and Nageki and Ryouta were both sworn to secrecy-”

“Kokoro found out. She doesn’t really exist and she has a clock that knows things. She told me. Nageki’s trying to reset the world. Anyway, I told Yuuya that and he told me that he fled town because he’d killed two people-”

“Typical.”

“But he wouldn’t tell me why. I do know why though! I know… a lot of things. Probably more than anybody should trust me to know, but, I saw The Dark King, and he stabbed my planisphere-”

“He did WHAT now!?” Sakuya grabbed her shoulders, suddenly looking VERY concerned for her well being, then grimacing and looking away, “I’ll erase him myself…”

“The world’s ending Sakuya it doesn’t /matter/. Besides, stabbing my planisphere is what gave me this information. Yuuya… killed Shuu Iwamine, but you already knew that. Shuu went after Anghel, and Yuuya got mad. You could figure that much out from the trial. Nishikikouji, though…” Hiyoko shivered slightly, “God, he’s even worse than we thought… Nishikikouji did certain things, to Anghel…” She then froze where she stood, stiffening up completely, “Oh fuck.”

“Hiyoko?” Sakuya’s voice was weak now, his worries only building for what her fate could be.

“Nishikikouji…” She muttered, shaking her head quickly then running off, “What’s-his-name is in danger!” She struggled to recall exactly who was resetting the world, but regardless, she needed to get to the library and save him. If not for the deluge of info she’d received in the stabbing she’d have no idea where to go, but this reset was entirely grounded in the storybooks, a brilliant innovation by The King just in case Holiday Star lost its Holiday charm. A chance to try again, at getting paradise.

-

“...You’re too late, Isa Souma,” A voice which haunted nightmares fell to the high ceilings of Holiday Star’s library, the owner of it having recognized those limping footsteps even after a century. More than that, perhaps.

“Too late for what?” The response was blank and uncaring.

“Well obviously! Too late to stop me!” All a jumble of limbs, Tohri held the shoddily-bound children’s books to his chest, standing over the fully prepared cauldron.

“I never wanted to stop you. I couldn’t care less what happens to this star. I just wanted to see you again, to ask you something…” Shuu tilted his head, the glowing light of the spell glinting off of his glasses, “Why… are you like this? I would normally never admit to remembering your existence, but… it really is hard to forget a coworker such as yourself. Too loud. Too obnoxious. But… in my memory, you were never malicious. What changed? What made you… worse than me?”

“You! You made me this way!” Tohri insisted, fumbling to keep the books in his grip, “After you drove me to quit science… I realized I could never make a change in the upcoming history of scientific discovery if you were in the picture! But, the picture… of course, I could make a splash in the art world! And if you made your mark in the scientific world by harming others, then I would have to do the same if I wanted success in my newly chosen field!” He explained, loudly, “And I have to thank you. It awoke a previously unknown passion within me, for capturing humanity in its most raw and vulnerable states, the purest of emotions…”

“Stop right there, Bishikikouji!” Another voice broke through the conversation, with a volume which rivaled Tohri’s. Hiyoko, of course, though she immediately faltered, “Where’s…”

“Nageki Fujishiro! Yes, well, I’ve already erased him, with a much more efficient weapon than last time I tried to rid the universe of one of you scumstains…” Tohri turned his nose up, “Even you can’t stop me now! I know how spells like these work, I’ve been around the universe a few times! A focus, to turn back time… in this case, storybooks based on your pathetic lives! But! If I, with different intentions, use these focuses in this spell… who knows what will happen, except that I will get what I want!” Hiyoko lunged forward to attack him while he monologued, but he just raised an eyebrow and dropped the books into the spell.

Whatever happened.  
Would be worse than this.


End file.
